Four of the 12 chairs of Judicial Conference committees named this year will be Third Circuit judges, a remarkable sign of Chief Justice Roberts’s confidence in the courts’ judges.

Yesterday the Judicial Conference announced Chief Justice Roberts’s committee chair appointments for this year. The 12 chairs named this year include one judge each from the Second, Sixth, and D.C. Circuits and five district judges from five different districts … and four Third Circuit judges:

• Judge Fisher is the new chair of the Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction;
• Judge Chagares continues as chair of the appellate rules advisory committee;
• Judge Hardiman continues as chair of the information-technology committee; and
• Judge Scirica continues as chair of the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability.

The chairs appointed this year cover about half of all Judicial Conference committees; chairs serve initial terms of three years subject to one reappointment, so the other half of the committees weren’t up this year.

The Mighty Third, indeed.