Consent Allows The Magistrate To Act
There exists a personal right for a litigant in federal court to insist on the involvement of a judge who has been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate in the manner contemplated by the Constitution. However, the Federal Magistrates Act authorizes magistrate judges to undertake "additional duties" when the parties in a case consent. For magistrates to undertake their routine tasks is a great relief to federal courts in processing their caseloads. When the parties consent, magistrates may supervise entire misdemeanor trials. "These duties are comparable in responsibility and importance to presiding over voir dire at a felony trial." Thus, supervising voir dire is one of the "additional duties" Congress authorized magistrate judges to undertake.
Read more about this topic: Peretz V. United States
Famous quotes containing the words consent, magistrate and/or act:
“The rule for every man is, not to depend on the education which other men have prepared for him,—not even to consent to it; but to strive to see things as they are, and to be himself as he is. Defeat lies in self-surrender.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is willingness to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.”
—William James (1842–1910)