Attorney General Merrick Garland held a formal investiture ceremony for the
judges of the new Data Protection Review Court (DPRC) on November 14, 2023.
The ceremony formally swearing in the judges of the new eight-member court
was held in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and is part of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy
Framework and the UK-U.S. Data Bridge Extension. The Attorney General issued
new regulations in October 2022 establishing the DPRC within the Office of
Privacy and Civil Liberties at the DOJ.

The judges of the new DPRC include two former United States Attorneys. Eric
Holder, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia as well as former Deputy
Attorney General and Attorney General, and David F. Levi, former U.S. Attorney for
the Eastern District of California and Judge of the U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of California, later Chief Judge of that Court, are among the eight
judges. The other DPRC judges include James E. Baker, Rajesh De, James X
Dempsey, Mary B. DeRosa, Thomas B. Griffith and Virginia A. Seitz.

The DPRC will review determinations made by the Civil Liberties Protection Officer
of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in response to
qualifying complaints that allege violations of U.S. law in the conduct of U.S.
signals intelligence activities. Attorney General Garland commented, “Although
this court has been established at the Department of Justice, its judges will
independently decide what remedies, if any, are appropriate for the cases in front
of them, and the intelligence agencies will be expected to abide by their
decisions.”