14.2: The American Federal Judiciary

Article III of the Constitution establishes the judicial branch of America’s national government and tasks it with interpreting the Constitution and laws made by Congress. The Founders believed a federal judiciary was necessary based on their experience under the Articles of Confederation. Without a court system to adjudicate interstate disputes, competing territorial claims and conflicting economic policies threatened to fracture the Union. State courts could not be relied upon to impartially resolve these matters. A federal court could settle them without being obviously biased toward one side or the other.

The Constitution only names one federal court, the Supreme Court, but it grants Congress the power to “ordain and establish” inferior courts as it sees fit. Using this power, Congress has created two other general categories of federal courts. Directly beneath the Supreme Court are 13 appellate courts. Each appellate court (also called a circuit court or court of appeals) hears appeals from a different circuit of lower courts. 11 of these 13 circuits, numbered First through Eleventh, cover the various states and territories of the United States (as depicted in Figure 14.1 below). The other two circuits are the District of Columbia Circuit, which handles many issues involving Congress and the executive branch, and the Federal Circuit, which deals with topics such as patent and trademark law.

Beneath the appellate courts are 94 district courts. Each district court covers all or part of a state or territory, with larger and more populous states split into multiple districts. The District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have their own district courts. The U.S. territories of Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have territorial courts which are functionally equivalent to district courts.

In addition to these main three tiers of federal courts, Congress has also used its Article I power to “constitute Tribunals [courts] inferior to the Supreme Court” for handling special issues. One example is bankruptcy courts, which hear bankruptcy cases in each of the districts. Another is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which hears appeals from courts-martial within the branches of the military. Judges on these courts are appointed for fixed terms whose lengths depend on the statutes that created the courts. By contrast, Supreme Court justices, appellate-court judges, and district-court judges are appointed for life (unless they are impeached, retire, or are promoted to another position).

Most federal cases begin at the district court level. The losing side in a district court case can appeal to an appellate court if it is dissatisfied with the outcome. The losing side in an appellate court case can likewise appeal to the Supreme Court. Because it is the “court of last resort,” there is no appeal opportunity for the losing side in a Supreme Court case, although the Supreme Court can overturn its own prior decisions in later cases.

Figure 14.1: U.S. states and territories by appellate court jurisdiction (Not pictured: Federal Circuit).