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Apropos of the 3d Circuit’s decision to deny the Trump campaign’s request for an injunction to undo PA’s certification of its votes, there's some speculation about the panel (all R-appointees) and the opinion’s author (a Trump-appointee). Time for a judicial administration 
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First, let's chat about panel configuration - that is, the process by which 3 judges are selected to sit together. As the great @adamchilton and I talked about in "Challenging the Randomness of Panel Assignment in the Federal Courts of Appeals"( https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4682&context=clr), and...
as I wrote about in "Panel Assignment in the Federal Courts of Appeals" ( https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4743&context=clr), panel configuration is not "perfectly" random. *But that is very different from saying it is deliberate.* 3/
Most deviations from randomness are what you would expect – e.g., a Judge has agreed to attend a moot court on X date and so can’t sit then. Or a senior Judge might specifically request to sit during certain months (something that is often honored in many circuits). 4/
There are some times when panel configuration comes closer to deliberate – when a circuit has a special sitting at a law school, say, and Judges from the state of the school are selected to sit (to reduce the burden and costs associated with travel, etc.). 5/
There may also be more deliberate panel configuration when a former Justice sits with a court – for example, ensuring that Judges who have not yet sat with a Justice have the opportunity to do so. *But it is worth stressing that these are very rare and unusual circumstances.* 6/
So again, while panel configuration is not "perfectly" random, it is not intentional and I have no reason to think that the 3 R-appointed Judges were selected for the 3d Cir. appeal. Indeed, I would be shocked if that were so (and believe the Judges on the court would be, too).
Second, on the matter of opinion assignment, it is certainly the case that the Chief Judge, as the presider of the panel, had the authority to decide who will author the opinion. It is worth noting that there are sometimes various constraints when it comes to this power. /8
As Judge Jon Newman and I are writing about in a forthcoming article on Chief Judges for @PennLRev, there are fascinating customs when it comes to opinion assignment. For example... /9
...in at least a few circuits, the panel presider asks a senior Judge (if one is on the panel) which opinion the Judge would like to write or would prefer not to write - and the request is generally honored. /10
Workload is also a consideration. If a given judge has a number of important assignments, that will affect the presider's decision about what to assign her. But the larger point, as @steve_vladeck pointed out, is that CJ Smith would have assigned the opinion to Judge Bibas. /11
In short, there is no reason to think that this was a specially configured panel, but the decision to have Judge Bibas author the opinion was intentional (though again, we do not know all the reasons why). /12
More broadly, panel configuration and opinion assignment, like other aspects of judicial administration, are quite nuanced and it is worth knowing the details! (Fin!) #TheMoreYouKnowAboutCourts #IHeartJudicialAdministration
