In April I observed here that visiting judges have been hearing far fewer CA3 cases than in years past. Bucking the trend, visiting judge Jane Restani sat with the court this week, visiting from an Article III court I’d never even heard of: the United States Court of International Trade. (Court page here, wikipedia here). Its mission:

to resolve disputes by:

Providing cost effective, courteous, and timely service to those affected by the judicial process;

Providing independent, consistent, fair, and impartial interpretation and application of the customs and international trade laws; and

Fostering improvements in customs and international trade law and practice and improvements in the administration of justice.

Judge Restani’s poor law clerks probably find themselves climbing a steep learning curve, since  customs courts doesn’t get much experience handling tricky and important capital habeas cases like the one the panel heard yesterday. (Although Judge Restani sounded admirably prepared at argument.)

Ambro and Barry were the other two judges on the panel.