United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
US Court
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (in case citations, 7th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts:
Central District of Illinois
Northern District of Illinois
Southern District of Illinois
Northern District of Indiana
Southern District of Indiana
Eastern District of Wisconsin
Western District of Wisconsin
The Seventh District was created by the 9th United States Congress with the Seventh Circuit Act of 1807. The court is based at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago and is composed of eleven appellate judges. It is one of 13 United States courts of appeals.
The court offers a relatively unique internet presence that includes wiki and RSS feeds of opinions and oral arguments. It is also notable for having one of the most prominent law and economics scholars, Judge Frank Easterbrook, on its court. Richard Posner, another prominent law and economics scholar, also served on this court until his retirement in 2017. Three judges from the Seventh Circuit, Sherman Minton, John Paul Stevens, and Amy Coney Barrett, have been appointed as Associate Justices of the Supreme Court.
Current composition of the court
As of December 15, 2025:
List of former judges
Chief judges
Chief judges have administrative responsibilities with respect to their circuits, and preside over any panel on which they serve, unless the circuit justice (the Supreme Court justice responsible for the circuit) is also on the panel. Unlike the Supreme Court, where one justice is specifically nominated to be chief, the office of chief judge rotates among the circuit judges.
To be chief, a judge must have been in active service on the court for at least one year, be under the age of 65, and have not previously served as chief judge.
“United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit” enters the record as uS Court. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Court can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q250451. The Library of Congress control number is n80112773. Authority coordinates are 41.879, -87.629. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1807, 2017 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.