Editing United States federal judge (section)

==Allocation of cases==
The chief judge of each district court is responsible for overseeing assignments of judges to cases, following a written policy. For reasons of impartiality, this is typically done by a random drawing or rotation. Judges may also be assigned particular types of cases based on their technical expertise or assigned to cases in a specific geographic location.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.iand.uscourts.gov/content/how-are-federal-judges-assigned-cases-0 |title=How are federal judges assigned to cases? |access-date=31 May 2024 |author=United States District Court, Northern District of Iowa}}</ref>

Appeals courts and the Supreme Court use similar systems, but depending on the type of filing, may assign one, three, all, or some other number of judges to deal with a particular request. For example, emergency motions might require a response from only one judge assigned to be on duty for a particular time period, but final decisions in important cases require the whole court. Appeals courts range in size from 6 ([[United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit|First Circuit]]) to 29 ([[United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit|Ninth Circuit]]). Some judges have specific expertise by virtue of which court they sit on. 

By statute, the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit]] has exclusive [[appellate jurisdiction]] for patents, trademarks, and certain employee benefits. Because it geographically covers the headquarters of federal agencies, the judges of the [[United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]] gain special expertise in administrative and constitutional law.