The Director of the Marshals Service and the Marshals for each of the 94 judicial districts and for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia are appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. P.L. 110-177 directs the Attorney General to report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees within 90 days on the security of federal prosecutors including firearm possession matters. Section 2501 of Title I authorizes a matching grant program to purchase armored vests for state, territorial and tribal law enforcement officers. Senior judges may serve as well as members of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the rule propounding body for the federal courts, and as members of the judicial councils for their circuits, the local rule making authority for the circuit, but the number of members of such councils and their terms of service are determined by a majority vote of the judges in regular active service in the circuit. 110-177 amends 28 U.S.C. 110-177 directs the Attorney General to study and report on the impact of state and local open access laws on federal judicial security.
Early in the 110th Congress, the Chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees introduced essentially identical versions of the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007 (H.R. 660 and S. 378), which mirrored legislation that the Senate passed at the close of the 109th Congress. Each house reported (S.Rept. 110-42; H.Rept. 110-218) and passed somewhat different variations (153 Cong. Rec. S4741-742, H7466), although the basic of the legislation remains unchanged in both instances. The Senate subsequently passed H.R. 660 with slight changes, which the House accepted under suspension of the rules (153 Cong. Rec. S15789-790, H16870). The President signed the bill into law on January 7, 2008 as Public Law 110-177. P.L. 110-177 has four components: adjustments to applicable provisions of criminal law, reenforcement of the authority and oversight features of the law governing federal judicial security, grant programs to facilitate increased security for the judiciary of the states, and miscellaneous provisions whose relation to judicial security might initially appear remote.
This is an abridged version of CRS Report RL33884, Court Security Improvement Act of 2007: A Legal Analysis of Public Law 110-177 (H.R. 660 and S. 378), by [author name scrubbed], without the footnotes and citations to authority found in the longer report.