CAHSS Faculty Books and Book Chapters
Book Title
Approaches to Federal Judicial History
Document Type
Book Chapter
ISBN
9781350118508
Publication Date
1-23-2020
Editors
Gautham Rao, Winston Bowman, Clara Altman
Keywords
administration, economics, federal judicial branch, federal judicial system, government, intercourt relationships, lower federal judicial biography, U.S. Courts of Appeals, U.S. District Courts, U.S. Supreme Court
Description
Charles Zelden’s essay, “All Rise: The Prospects and Challenges of Lower Federal Judicial Biography,” picks up where Kobrick concluded. Zelden laments the paucity of biographies of lower-federal-court judges, while nonetheless 12. See Funk, infra ch. 2. 13. See Hall, infra ch. 3. 14. See Grisinger, infra ch. 4. 15. See Kobrick, infra ch. 5. 5 Approaches to Federal Judicial History Federal Judicial Center appreciating the challenges that routinely face these biographers. Historically speaking, Zelden writes, lower federal judges “are generally not well known, the importance of their work is not self-evident, their papers are often scattered or fragmentary or thin, and the wider context in which they operate is not wellestablished.” But especially because the lower federal courts are the front line of interaction between the federal judiciary and the people, Zelden believes that biographers should persist in trying to write more and better biographies of lower federal judges. This is a unique opportunity, he concludes, to weigh “the difference between law on the books and law as applied” throughout the federal judiciary.
Publisher
Federal Judicial Center
City
Washington D.C.
First Page
89
Last Page
103
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences
NSUWorks Citation
Zelden, C. L. (2020). All Rise: The Prospects and Challenges of Lower Federal Judicial Biography. Approaches to Federal Judicial History, 89-103. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_facbooks/169
Files
Download Full Text (3.7 MB)