[6] Selya was nominated by President Reagan on September 26, 1986, to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, to a new seat created by 98 Stat.

[6][9] Then Senator Lincoln Chafee recommended that former Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Robert Flanders be nominated to replace Selya.

[12] Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asserted that, due to the President's failure to work with Whitehouse and fellow Democratic senator Jack Reed in selecting a consensus candidate, the vacancy left by Selya's departure would not be filled during Bush's tenure.

[13] On October 6, 2009, President Barack Obama formally nominated O. Rogeriee Thompson to Selya's seat on the First Circuit.

[5] As a private practitioner, Selya was often lulled to sleep by the legalese and boilerplate rhetoric in judicial opinions, a matter he has sought to remedy since ascending to the bench: "I made a commitment to myself that I would attempt to prove that sound jurisprudence and interesting prose are not mutually exclusive.

Boston attorney Harvey A. Silverglate has written that his opinions are "well known" for their "remarkably judgmental but politically naive language," and that "[i]t is not unusual to see Selya gratuitously criticize, in sarcastic and sometimes grandiloquent fashion, a party or witness.

[18] One of Selya's recent opinions, Ungar v. PLO,[19] has been singled out by The Green Bag as a notable example of good judicial writing.

2008) (civil procedure);[25] Rio Mar Assocs., LP, SE v. UHS of Puerto Rico, Inc., 522 F.3d 159 (1st Cir.