The Federal Judiciary

About the federal judiciary

The federal judiciary is one of the three branches of the United States government, alongside the legislative and executive branches. Article III of the U.S. Constitution vests the judicial power of the United States in “one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”^[1] The Supreme Court is the only court the Constitution itself creates; every other federal court exists because Congress established it by statute.^[3]

Federal judges are not elected. The President nominates them and the United States Senate confirms them, and under Article III they hold their offices “during good Behaviour” — in practice, for life, until they retire, take senior status, resign, or die in office.^[1] Because they serve no fixed term and represent no state or party, federal judges are insulated from the electoral pressures that shape the other two branches.

At the top of the system sits the Supreme Court of the United States, the nation’s highest court and the final word on questions of federal law and the Constitution.^[2] The Court has had nine seats — one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices — since 1869; that number is set by statute, not by the Constitution, and has changed several times in the Court’s history.^[2] Beneath the Supreme Court, Congress has established 13 courts of appeals (the regional circuits) and 94 district courts, which together handle the overwhelming majority of federal cases.^[3]

The Candidate currently tracks the Supreme Court of the United States — every sitting Justice and every former Justice, with sourced biographies, appointment and service records, and a versioned machine-readable dataset. Coverage of the courts of appeals and the district courts is planned for a future expansion.