Do you know how judges get onto the FISA court?

[napi21]

Created under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA court and the FISA Review Court were designed to limit government abuses of domestic wiretaps. Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was notorious for spying on prominent Americans in the name of national security. FISA was an attempt to prevent that from happening again.

The act called for the chief justice of the United States to appoint seven members to the FISA court to hear requests for warrants to investigate those suspected of being agents of a foreign power and to appoint three members to the FISA Review Court. Under U.S. wiretap laws, the targets of taps must eventually be notified -- a requirement that doesn't apply to targets of FISA investigations.

snip

But in May, the seven FISA judges issued a stunning ruling in In re Sealed Case, 02-001. Sitting en banc, the court issued a 7-0 decision aimed at ensuring that criminal prosecutors in the Justice Department did not use FISA to orchestrate domestic criminal investigations. The court was attempting to formalize a "wall" that had developed over the years between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents that prevented prosecutors from collecting information obtained through FISA warrants not subject to the normal protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Then the court did something else it had never done before -- it published its decision rebuking the government. It listed a litany of past misstatements and misrepresentations to the court and wrote that one FBI agent is barred from ever appearing before it again.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1043457933027

So far, they don't appear to be partisan, but since one has resigned, I guess Roberts gets to appoint one now.