28 U.S.C. § 42
Section 42 · Allotment of Supreme Court justices to circuits
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 39 court decisions — leading case United States v. Harris (1992)
Most recently applied in Gawker Media, LLC v. Bollea (January 2014)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The Chief Justice of the United States and the associate justices of the Supreme Court shall from time to time be allotted as circuit justices among the circuits by order of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice may make such allotments in vacation.
A justice may be assigned to more than one circuit, and two or more justices may be assigned to the same circuit.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Historical and Revision Notes
Based on title 28, U.S.C., 1940 ed., §215 (Mar. 3, 1911, ch. 231, §119, 36 Stat. 1131; Dec. 23, 1944, ch. 724, 58 Stat. 925).
The authority of the Chief Justice in vacation to assign a circuit justice to more than one circuit was extended by omitting the phrase “whenever by reason of death or resignation, no Justice is allotted to a circuit.”
The provision in section 215 of Title 28, U.S.C., 1940 ed., that, for the purposes of said section, the “District of Columbia shall be deemed to be a judicial circuit,” was omitted, since the District of Columbia is made a judicial circuit by section 41 of this title.
The last paragraph was added to make clear the intent of Congress that the powers of the Court to assign the justices among the several circuits should be completely flexible.
Changes were made in phraseology.