Chief U.S. District Judge of the Middle District of Florida Steven Merryday didn’t mind making the trip from Tampa to Jacksonville on Friday, when he was invited by the Jacksonville Chapter of the Federal Bar Association to share lunch and deliver a “State of the District” address.
“Jacksonville feels a lot like home to me,” said Merryday.
As for the address, Merryday began with a caution for his audience. He said he expected no “contrived and tedious applause” and he would not make “impossible promises,” such as when the president delivers to Congress the annual State of the Union address.
Merryday’s remarks were clear and succinct.
“There’s not a whole lot interesting you can say about the district. The state of the district is as it should be — reliably and foreseeably constant,” he said.
Much of the chief judge’s time at the podium was devoted to recruiting a new magistrate judge for the Middle District, which has an opening in Tampa.
Merryday said the office was created in 1793 when a magistrate’s only authority was to set bail. The qualifications were limited to “a discreet person learned in the law.”
Being a member of the Bar was not required and in the 1700s, “discreet” was defined as “possessing or exhibiting sound judgment in speech or action.”
Over the years, the duties of a magistrate evolved to include civil and criminal orders and Social Security appeals. In 2015, the four magistrate judges in Jacksonville wrote 4,153 orders. More than 1 million orders were written by the 530 magistrate judges in the U.S., Merryday said.
Merryday also was clear in his recruitment remarks, which demonstrated what U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan described as a “sharp but dry sense of humor.”
“If you enjoy working alone, thrive on modest wages and have no friends or want to lose the ones you’ve got, you might consider applying for magistrate judge,” said Merryday.
But, he added, “It’s honorable and interesting work.”
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