Visiting judge

A visiting judge is a judge appointed to hear a case as a member of a court to which he or she does not ordinarily belong (cf. pro hac vice for attorneys). In many United States Courts of Appeals it is not uncommon for a district judge to sit on a panel as a visiting judge; less frequently a judge from another circuit (in active service or, more commonly, in senior status). Retired Supreme Court justices have done the same, most recently Justice O'Connor, and very unusually, sitting Justices (in 1984, for example, then-Justice William Rehnquist served as a visiting judge for a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.). This is sometimes done to ease caseload pressures, and sometimes (as in Rehnquist's case) for experience.