What Does an Appellate Court Judge Do?

What does an appellate court actually do? It’s almost entirely a reading and writing job. That’s what I did for work prior to becoming a judge, writing for two federal appeals judges and in private practice as an appellate lawyer.

Appellate courts exist to fix any mistakes made at a trial and, in doing so, to write opinions that judges and lawyers can rely on in future cases to understand how the law applies to similar cases.

There are no witnesses or juries in the appellate court.

Instead, lawyers write briefs explaining any mistakes they think were made at trial or arguing that everything was done just right. The party asking for mistakes to be fixed (the side that lost on that issue at trial) writes a brief first, the other side files a response, and the first party writes a shorter reply.

This is an amicus brief filed to the appellate court

Then either side can ask to make an oral argument—usually just a few minutes—in front of three appellate judges to answer any questions the court might have and make their final pitch.

Once that’s done, one of the appellate court judges writes an opinion, sends it around to the other two judges, and after everyone has either joined the opinion or written a separate opinion (concurring or dissenting), the decision is issued.

The parties get the written opinion out of the blue one day, explaining what the appellate court decided.

In that written opinion, the appellate court either affirms the trial court or directs the trial court to take whatever action it believes necessary to fix any errors.

That’s all there is to it.

What does this mean? It means that we want strong writers on the appellate court.

Before I joined the trial court, I was an appellate lawyer.

That means my job was writing to explain to courts what happened—right or wrong—in lower courts. That gives me the skills to write well for the appellate court.

People who spent their careers in trial court aren’t the best for the job; they developed totally different skills (investigating facts, questioning witnesses) that aren’t even used on appeal.

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