The Federal Circuit Now Has a Theme Song

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit deals with patents, trademarks, international trade, government contracts. Dry terrain. The kind of institution that rarely registers outside legal journals and niche policy circles. That changed last week, sort of, when the court uploaded a theme song to its official YouTube channel.

The track arrived without context. No description on the video. Comments turned off. What remained was the thing itself: a strange hybrid of Schoolhouse Rock and whatever a generative AI spat out when someone typed “civics education but make it fun.” A monkey rides a rocket in the opening frames. By the end, cartoon judges are waving glow sticks under a disco ball. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush appear somewhere in between.

Musically, it sounds like what you’d expect from AI working off public domain archives and half-remembered educational television. The lyrics go straight to the source of judicial power: “The president picks, that’s how it’s done / Then the Senate confirms each one / They serve for life to stay independent and fair.” A convenient reminder, delivered without irony, during a judicial conference where the song was first unveiled.

The Federal Circuit has jurisdiction over cases that shape how intellectual property law functions in this country. That it now has a theme song, and one this aesthetically confused, says something about the moment we’re in. Not about the judiciary specifically. More about how institutions talk to the public now, or try to, or half-try to, using tools nobody fully understands yet. Somewhere in a federal building, someone greenlit glow stick judges and a rocket monkey and thought yes, this is how we explain appellate jurisdiction.