Visiting judge
Judge appointed to hear a case in another court
A visiting judge is a judge appointed to hear a case as a member of a court to which he or she does not ordinarily belong. In United States federal courts, this is referred to as an assignment "by designation" of the Chief Justice of the United States (for inter-circuit assignments) or the Circuit Chief Judge (for intra-circuit assignments), and is authorized by 28 U.S.C. § 292 (for active district judges) or 28 U.S.C. § 294 (for retired justices and judges).
In many United States Courts of Appeals it is not uncommon for a district judge to sit on a panel as a visiting judge; less frequently it is a judge from another circuit (in active service or, more commonly, in senior status). Retired Supreme Court justices have done the same, including Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter, and Stephen Breyer, and very unusually, sitting justices (in 1984, for example, Justice William Rehnquist served as a visiting judge for a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia). This is sometimes done to ease caseload pressures, and sometimes (as in Rehnquist's case) for experience. In other cases, notably those of some judges in senior status, the individual may sit in a different court for personal reasons (such as in a person's hometown).
References
External links
Kopf, Richard George (July 28, 2013). "Have Robe, Will Travel". Hercules and the Umpire: The Role of the Federal Trial Judge. Archived from the original on July 9, 2014.
“Visiting judge” enters the record as judge appointed to hear a case in another court. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Visiting, judge and Judge can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Visiting judge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Visiting, judge and Judge provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7936329. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2013 and 2014.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Visiting judge”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Visiting judge primary sources, Visiting judge archive and Visiting research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Visiting judge”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Visiting judge” 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.