New chief federal Judge Patrick Schiltz sees caseloads, security as Minnesota court's top issues

U.S. District Court of Minnesota Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz had ample opportunity the past two years to witness how a chief judge's tenure can at once be upended and defined by unprecedented local and global events.

Schiltz, who became the District of Minnesota's 11th chief judge this month, watched how his predecessor John Tunheim was forced to steer the court through a global pandemic and widespread civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd.

"It's like each chief judge starts our seven-year term not knowing what's going to shape the term," Schiltz said.

The chief judge leads the administration of the court and is appointed based on seniority and on whether the judge is younger than 65. Terms last for seven years, or when a chief judge retires or takes senior status.

"My hope is to be the Benjamin Harrison of chief judges: one that no one remembers," he said with a laugh, referring to the 23rd U.S. president.

The Duluth native and Harvard Law graduate — appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2006 — predicted in an interview that it will be a challenge for the court's seven full-time judges to keep pace with rising caseloads as its senior judges begin to take on fewer assignments in their later years. Schiltz, 62, would like to see Minnesota receive an additional slate of full-time federal judges but Congress has not approved such a measure since 1990.

Schiltz said that while COVID-19's imposition on court functions might be ebbing, broader threats to judicial security remain as concerning now than at any point in his life.

"There is a much more poisonous, angry atmosphere out there we are functioning in," he said.

Schiltz expressed concerns about "mobs" showing up outside the homes of prosecutors and judges "to intimidate to do whatever the mob wanted."

"Thankfully they've been peaceful but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to worry about how that could develop," he said.

In a letter to court staff on his last day as chief judge, Tunheim meanwhile reflected on the new challenges to courthouse security brought on by the unrest that marked the past two years.

"The dreadful killing of George Floyd raised community awareness to a much higher level, but the resulting violence and mayhem presented us with tougher challenges as we started working much more closely with our partner agencies to weather the periods of uncertainty," Tunheim wrote.

Tunheim will remain a full-time federal judge and said he does not yet intend to take senior status, which can be a form of quasi-retirement where judges take as few or no cases as they desire. He plans to remain "heavily involved" in new, developing justice and democracy centers at the St. Paul and Minneapolis courthouses that will offer civic education to middle and high school students. The St. Paul center is expected to open by year's end.

"I feel really good that I am handing over the keys of a Court that is in very good shape to Judge Schiltz," Tunheim told court staff.

Schiltz served as a law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia before working in private practice at Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis and later taught at Notre Dame Law School. He left in 2000 to become the founding associate dean of the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

"All of these are little tiles in the mosaic that make up who you are," Schiltz said.

Former Chief Judge James Rosenbaum, now a mediator and arbitrator in private practice, said there are limits to just how much power a chief judge can wield while managing a group of peers who are also appointed to lifetime tenures and can only be removed by an act of Congress.

"A chief judge operates in a very delicate environment," Rosenbaum said. "Somebody once said, 'You are not a first among equals you are an equal among firsts.'"

But there remain opportunities for leadership, he said. Such as the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that occurred just before Rosenbaum took the reins of the court and as construction of today's Minneapolis federal building needed planning.

Former U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald, who now works as an attorney for Faegre Drinker in Minneapolis, said she first formed an impression of a then-new judge Schiltz as he shadowed Rosenbaum during an arson trial that MacDonald helped prosecute.

"I was extremely impressed by the calm demeanor and quizzical nature and approach to the conversations we were having," MacDonald said. "He was calm in a way that a judge should be calm but also engaged with a firm hand."

MacDonald also remembers finding common ground over their shared connections to Notre Dame and described a dry, quick wit "that translates to the bench and how you run an organization."

Both Schiltz and Tunheim now also find themselves supportive of streaming video of certain court hearings, having seen how the state murder trial of Derek Chauvin transpired last year for the killing of George Floyd. Yet decisions on whether to allow video or audio broadcasts from federal courtrooms must be made at a national level.

Schiltz said that when Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill allowed livestreaming of the trial, "I thought that was a huge mistake but by the time he was done I admitted I was wrong."

"It really helped people see what a criminal trial looked like," said Schiltz, who pointed out that viewers could see how "careful" such trials are often managed while also observing the more monotonous, technical moments of a trial.

"At the end of the day it built confidence," Schiltz said.