Northern District of Illinois announces application process for Magistrate vacancy

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois is accepting applications for a full-time United States Magistrate Judge position in the Eastern Division, "with the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse at Chicago, Illinois as the duty station."

Duty station? The Court has used this term before. Is this we should call courthouses now?

The deadline for applications for the current vacancy is March 28, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. The announcement of the new vacancy specifically provides that "all applicants for the vacancy that closed on November 23, 2022 will be automatically considered this vacancy."

Applications will be evaluated by a "Merit Selection Panel composed of attorneys and other members of the community." The panel will "recommend to the judges of the Court, in confidence, a list of the persons whom it considers best qualified." The judges of the Court, in turn, will make the final appointment, "subject to a Federal Bureau of Investigation full-field investigation and Internal Revenue Service tax check." All applications will be kept confidential, and will be examined only by members of the Merit Selection Panel and the district judges of the Northern District of Illinois.

Applicants for this vacancy must:

1. be, and have been for at least five years, a member in good standing of the bar of the highest court of a State, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands of the United States, and have been engaged in the active practice of law for a period of at least five years;
2. be competent to perform all of the duties of the office; be of good moral character, emotionally stable and mature; be committed to equal justice under the law; be in good health; be patient and courteous; and be capable of deliberation and decisiveness;
3. be less than seventy years of age; and
4. not be related to a judge of the district court.

And there is one further requirement: "All new employees must be fully vaccinated (i.e., at least 2 weeks after last dose) for COVID-19 and, prior to the starting with the Court, present proof of vaccination or submit a request in writing for an exemption to this requirement on the basis of a sincerely held religious belief or medical condition."

The pay is good -- the present annual salary for a United States Magistrate Judge is $213,992 -- and the retirement plan is even better: A magistrate who reitres after turning 65 and serving 14 years in the position, whether continuously or not, gets an annuity equal to the salary being received at the time the United States Magistrate Judge leaves office.

Further details, and the application itself, are available at this page of the Northern District's website.