TABLE a 1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTS REPORT by JUDGES of COURT Uscourts Form

Yes. If you’ve been following the news, you’d see numerous examples of that, especially recently.The executive branch is charged with the execution of laws. So while in theory the President can’t unilaterally MAKE laws, he or she can interpret them in such as way that may or may not be Constitutional.An example is the current DACA issues. There’s LOTS of Constitutional questions here. A VERY simplified view is, while the Executive Branch has the authority to export every single undocumented alien, the reality is, it’s not practical to do so. So, pretty much every administration (i.e. even well before President Obama) has decided to focus on different segments of that group, generally the ones who were violent criminals or had other fairly obvious reasons we didn’t want them here.President Obama (more accurately the State Department) formulated a series of regulations that allowed the those who were brought here as children to register and NOT face immediate deportation as long as they followed certain rules. Many argue that what he did wasn’t Constitutional, but so far, has not been ruled unconstitutional.So, now President Trump came along and basically said, as of March 5th, these people were no longer protected and could be deported immediately. Again, on one hand, this by itself probably is Constitutional. The current argument seems to though one based on Due Process. Basically those who did register were made promises by the Executive Branch and now they’re being taken away without review.I’m skipping a LOT of details (so really don’t want lots of “gotchas” in the comments, I realize I’ve simplified thing greatly).But, imagine a similar scenario in a criminal situation. You’re guilty of a crime. The prosecutor says, “hey, we can have a plea bargain, you keep your nose clean and don’t commit any more crimes for 1 year and show up once a month for your parole office, and we’ll call it even”. You agree. The judge says, “works for me.”Then 9 months later, the jurisdiction gets a new prosecutor who campaigned hard on “getting tough on crime”. They meet you and say, “You know what, screw the plea bargain, the last person was too easy on crime. I’m tossing you in the slammer.” Now this is NOT an exact analogy (and again don’t pick nits) but you’d rightly be upset and be going to a judge arguing there was a lack of due process in your change of status.So, judges are there to ensure that executive orders meet constitutional muster.BTW, note are fairly boring like “Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration” or “Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice”. Basically interpretations of how things will be done.

It's not always a panel of three judges. The U.S. Courts of Appeals can also hear and decide an appeal en banc or per curiam. It depends on the procedures of the particular court, but since appeals are generally as of right than entirely permissive as with the Supreme Court, and their subject-matter jurisdiction is wider in terms of the courts and tribunals below that are the sources of appeals, their caseload is greater, and so the caseload must be apportioned appropriately.Page on fjc.gov - A Primer on the Jurisdiction of the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Judge Taylor graduated from Yale Law School and worked as a practicing attorney for over twenty years before she was appointed to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter. She took senior status at the age of 65.

Each of your sentences make a worthy topic.By “set policies” I assume you mean “legislate.” Yes, it’s really legal for district judges to legislate for the entire country, but it is very rare. Now, the judges will tell you they don’t do that, and the vast majority of their time they don’t. They are busy handling private disputes without national implications. Yet, every once in awhile, one of the hundreds of district judges will be handed a case that impacts the entire country. Most judges would rather not rule on hot button topics, and they have a plethora of devices to avoid making such a decision. But some judges seem to relish national disputes. Even when legislating, the judge can avoid the effects of his rule by staying the decision pending appeal. For example, see the recent Obamacare ruling.The courts inexorably legislate when they decide cases with national impact. The Supreme Court does this more frequently than any other level of the courts because political disputes are concentrated at that level. Sometimes it seems some the justices go out of their way to decide political disputes (“activist”) while others seem more reticent to do so (“conservative”). Even so, the justices deny they are consciously doing this, which is true because the legislating is a byproduct of the decision-making process.Like I said, it is rare for a district judge to legislate, but some do. No, I don’t think they are overstepping their bounds. District courts are courts of first impression and, with rare exception, every case must start there.

Probably not. The recent US Supreme Court decision was based, in part, on the fact that the government had no compelling, rational interest in determining the sexes of those who chose to marry.Goverment may very well have a compelling interest when it comes to the number of spouses, however. The US legal system is pretty well established. A major overhaul is not a trivial exercise and avoiding it could be cast as a compelling state interest. Bogging courts down for years in overly complex cases is not something anyone should want.Marriage has many legal ramifications. Settling disputes over child custody is already a fraught venture with two parents; expanding it to three, four, six, whatever, could be practically impossible for courts to handle. Not "practically" as in "almost," but "practically" as in "feasible".Issues like end of life decisions are also already complicated with just one spouse. (See the Terri Schiavo case). Avoiding a multiplication of the problem could be seen as a compelling state interest.Perhaps the biggest hurdle is that the Supreme Court has already found that laws banning polygamy are constitutional. Acting on the basis of precedent, a future court would both have its hands tied to a large extent and would have to find a very major reason to change its mind.The fact that the UN Human Rights Council finds that polygamy is violative of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights would also tend to militate its achieving quick legality in the US.

If the village is, say, 49% white and 49% black (about what it is where I live), and some schools are mainly black and some are mainly white, even though the neighborhoods aren’t segregated that way. That’s what it means.The racial balance of the school should reflect the racial balance of the area it covers, and that area should be drawn pretty much in squares (circles would leave some areas with no schools). If the school district lines are convoluted, if they’re a square with a slot in it “belonging” to another school, if they’re square with a “tongue” sticking out covering a different neighborhood, that’s an “action [that] ha[s] contributed to racial imbalances”. As Tom Dolan said, Gerrymandering at the school district level.