The Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO) is an administrative agency that is the central support entity for the judicial branch providing a wide range of administrative, legal, financial, management, program, and information technology services to the federal courts. In other words, the AO handles the non-law aspects of the federal court system.
The AO is directly supervised by the Judicial Conference of the United States, which sets the national and legislative policy of the federal judiciary. The Judicial Conference of the United States is composed of the chief judges from each judicial and geographic circuit as well as the chief judge of the Court of International Trade. The AO implements and executes Judicial Conference policies, applicable federal statutes, and applicable regulations. It also facilitates communications within the judiciary and with Congress, the executive branch, and the public on behalf of the judiciary.
The AO is a unique entity in that neither the executive branch nor the legislative branch have a comparable agency providing the broad range of services and functions that the Administrative Office does for the Judicial Branch. The lawyers, public administrators, accountants, systems engineers, analysts, architects, statisticians, and other staff of the AO provide a wide variety of professional services to meet the needs of judges and over 32,000 Judiciary employees working in more than 800 locations throughout the United States. The AO’s website can be found here.
[Last updated in June of 2022 by the Wex Definitions Team]
- Keywords