US Federal Court of Appeals System

• There are 11 numbered court of appeals across the United States.
• The twelfth court of appeals is the D.C. Court of Appeals.
• The D.C. Court of Appeals handles most appeals involving federal regulatory commissions and agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• The thirteenth federal appeals court is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit deals with patents, contracts, and financial claims against the federal government.
• Each circuit is supervised by a chief judge.
• The chief judge is the most senior judge in terms of service below the age of sixty-five.
• The chief judge can serve no more than seven years.
• The number of judges within each circuit varies depending on workload and complexity, and ranges from six to nearly thirty.
• Judges are divided into rotating three-judge panels to decide cases.
• These panels are made up of active judges within the circuit, visiting judges, and retired judges.
• Visiting judges are primarily district judges from the same circuit.
• In rare cases, all the judges in a circuit may choose to sit together (en banc) to decide a case by majority vote.
• Courts of appeals have appellate jurisdiction over two general categories of cases: appeals from criminal and civil cases from the district courts, as well as appeals from administrative agencies.
• Criminal and civil case appeals constitute about 90% of the workload of the courts of appeals.
• Appeals from administrative agencies constitute about 10%.
• The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is considered the second most important court in the nation because its decisions govern the regulatory agencies.
• Many agencies are located in Washington, D.C., resulting in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing an inordinate number of cases.
• Some justices have sat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals before their nomination to the Supreme Court.
• The courts of appeals are the courts of last resort for almost all federal litigation.
• Litigants do not have an automatic right to an appeal once a decision is made by a federal court of appeals.
• The losing party may submit a petition to the Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Court grants few of these requests.
• Most cases, if they actually go to trial, go no further than the district court level.
• Courts of appeals do not hear new testimony.
• Lawyers submit written arguments in a brief (also submitted in trial courts), and then appear to present and argue the case orally to the court.
• Courts of appeals try to correct errors of law and procedure that have occurred in lower courts or administrative agencies.

Briefs

• A brief is a document containing the legal written arguments in a case, filed with a court by a party prior to a hearing or trial.
• Decisions of any court of appeals are binding on only the district courts within the geographic confines of the circuit.
• Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court are binding throughout the nation and establish national precedents.

Precedents

• Prior judicial decisions that serve as a rule for settling subsequent cases of a similar nature.

Stare Decisis

• Reliance on past decisions or precedents to formulate decisions in new cases.
• Stare Decisis is a Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand".
• The principle of stare decisis allows for continuity and predictability in the judicial system.
• Judges can carve out new ground and ignore, decline to follow, or even overrule precedents.
• The above can occur in order to reach a different conclusion in a case involving similar circumstances.
• Parties to a suit know that one cannot always predict the outcome of a case.
• If predicting case outcomes were possible, there would be little reason to go to court.