Federal Appellate Panel Must Be Composed Of Article III Judges

In Nguyen v. United States, 539 U.S. 69 (June 9, 2003), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated an appeal where the panel included a judge from the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. Non-Article III judges are not authorized panelists under 28 U.S.C. § 292(a), which permits district judges to sit by designation. Petitioner raised this argument for the first time in his certiorari petition, but that was not too late to attack jurisdiction.