United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

Organization

The court's jurisdiction is split into an eastern division, including Cook, DuPage, McHenry, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Lake, and Will counties, with its sessions held in Chicago and Wheaton; and a western division, including Boone, Carroll, DeKalb, Jo Daviess, Lee, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside, and Winnebago counties, with its sessions held in Freeport and Rockford.

History

The Northern District itself was created by a statute passed on February 13, 1855, , which subdivided the District of Illinois into the Northern and the Southern Districts. The boundaries of the District and the seats of the courts were set forth in the statute:

The counties of [Hancock County, Illinois

Hancock]], [[McDonough County, Illinois

The district has since been re-organized several times. The [United States District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois was created on March 3, 1905, by , by splitting counties out of the Northern and Southern Districts. It was later eliminated in a reorganization on October 2, 1978, which replaced it with a Central District, , formed primarily from parts of the Southern District, and returning some counties to the Northern District.

The Northern District of Illinois, which contains the entire Chicago metropolitan area, accounts for 1,531 of the 1,828 public corruption convictions in the state between 1976 and 2012, almost 84%, also making it the federal district with the most public corruption convictions in the nation between 1976 and 2012.

Current judges

:

Former judges

Chief judges

Succession of seats

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List of U.S. attorneys since 1857

• Augustus M. Herrington, 1857–1858
• Henry S. Fitch, 1858–1861
• Edwin C. Larned, 1861
• Joseph O. Glover, 1869
• Mark Bangs, 1875–1879
• Joseph B. Seake, 1879–1884
• Richard S. Tuthill, 1884–1886
• William G. Ewing, 1886–1890
• Thomas E. Milchrist, 1891–1893
• Sherwood Dixon, 1893–1894
• John C. Black, 1895–1899
• Solomon H. Bethea, 1899–1905
• Charles B. Morrison, 1905–1906
• Edwin W. Sims, 1906–1911
• James Herbert Wilkerson, 1911–1914
• Charles F. Clyne, 1914–1922
• Edwin A. Olson, 1922–1927
• George E. Q. Johnson, 1927–1931
• Dwight H. Green, 1931–1935
• Michael L. Igoe, 1935–1938
• William Joseph Campbell, 1938–1940
• J. Albert Woll, 1940–1947
• Otto Kerner Jr., 1947–1954
• Irwin N. Cohen, 1954
• Robert Tieken, 1954–1961
• James P. O'Brien, 1961–1963
• Frank E. McDonald, 1963–1964
• Edward Hanrahan, 1964–1968
• Tom Foran, 1968–1970
• William J. Bauer, 1970–1971
• James R. Thompson, 1971–1975
• Samuel K. Skinner, 1975–1977
• Thomas P. Sullivan, 1977–1981
• Gregory C. Jones, 1981
• Dan K. Webb, 1981–1985
• Anton R. Valukas, 1985–1989
• Ira A. Raphaelson, 1989–1990
• Fred Foreman, 1990–1993
• Michael J. Shepard, 1993
• Jim Burns, 1993–1997
• Scott R. Lassar, 1997–2001
• Patrick Fitzgerald, 2001–2012
• Gary S. Shapiro, 2012–2013
• Zachary T. Fardon, 2013–2017
• Joel R. Levin, 2017
• John R. Lausch Jr., 2017–2023
• Morris Pasqual, 2023–2025
• Andrew S. Boutros, 2025-

References

References

1. Cahan, Richard. (Dec 18, 2002). "A Court That Shaped America: Chicago's Federal District Court from Abe Lincoln to Abbie Hoffman". Northwestern University Press.
2. (March 13, 2023). "Northern District of Illinois {{!}} Meet the U.S. Attorney".
3. Asbury Dickens, ''A Synoptical Index to the Laws and Treaties of the United States of America'' (1852), p. 393.
4. [https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/u.s.-district-courts-districts-illinois-legislative-history U.S. District Courts of Illinois, Legislative history], ''[[Federal Judicial Center]]''.
5. (February 15, 2012). "Chicago and Illinois, Leading the Pack in Corruption; Anti-Corruption Report Number 5". University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Political Science.
6. "The Political Graveyard: U.S. District Attorneys in Illinois".
7. (February 23, 2009). "ACLU Of Illinois welcomes new board members".