Also known as: U.S. Courts of Appeals · United States Court of Appeals · U.S. Court of Appeals · federal courts of appeals · circuit courts · federal appellate courts
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The federal intermediate appellate courts established in each judicial circuit to review decisions of the district courts within their geographic or subject-matter jurisdiction. These courts sit in panels of three or more judges and issue binding precedent for the trial courts in their circuits.
Umeko Uchida sued Uptown Apparel in federal district court and lost on several evidentiary objections. She appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The appellate court applied the Federal Rules of Evidence to assess whether the district court's pretrial rulings were correct.
Uri Underwood and his partner challenged a state marriage ban in district court and lost. They appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The court reviewed the constitutional claims and issued a decision that later reached the Supreme Court.
The petitioners were fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners were deceased. They lived in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. Those states defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman under their constitutions and statutes. The petitioners filed suits in federal district courts in their home states. They sought marriage licenses or recognition of marriages lawfully performed elsewhere. James Obergefell and John Arthur traveled from Ohio to Maryland to marry aboard a medical transport plane because Arthur suffered from ALS; Obergefell later sought to be listed as surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, Michigan nurses, adopted three children but could not both serve as legal parents under state adoption rules. Army Reserve Sergeant Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura married in New York before DeKoe's deployment to Afghanistan and later settled in Tennessee. Each district court ruled in the petitioners' favor. The respondents appealed. The Sixth Circuit consolidated the cases and reversed the district court judgments. The petitioners sought certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. Same-sex couples had begun establishing families after substantial cultural and political developments in the late twentieth century. Earlier litigation had addressed the legal status of gays and lesbians, including challenges that reached the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas.
View caseUgo Uberti sought a writ of mandamus from the district court to compel a government officer to deliver his commission. After denial he appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court examined whether it possessed authority to issue the writ against an executive officer.
In December 1801, William Marbury, Dennis Ramsay, Robert Townsend Hooe, and William Harper petitioned the Supreme Court for a rule requiring Secretary of State James Madison to show cause why a writ of mandamus should not issue commanding delivery of their commissions as justices of the peace in the District of Columbia. The applicants had been nominated by outgoing President John Adams. The Senate had advised and consented to the appointments. Commissions in due form were signed by the President with the seal of the United States affixed by the Secretary of State. During the proceedings the Court heard testimony from Department of State clerks Jacob Wagner and Daniel Brent, who described the preparation and handling of the commissions. Wagner recalled that two commissions had been signed but could not confirm whether those of the applicants were recorded. Brent believed Marbury's and Hooe's commissions were made out. Ramsay's was omitted by mistake. None of the Adams-signed commissions for District justices were recorded. Attorney General Levi Lincoln, who had acted as Secretary of State, testified that he had seen signed and sealed commissions but did not know whether any for the applicants were ever sent out. James Marshall's affidavit stated that on March 4, 1801, he received and later returned several commissions from the Secretary of State's office, including those for Hooe and Harper. The applicants also submitted the affidavit of Hazen Kimball confirming that commissions for Marbury and Hooe were in the office on March 3, 1801. Madison did not appear or show cause after the rule was served. The motion for the writ itself was heard in the February 1803 term.
View caseUna Ueda was convicted under a federal statute for possessing a firearm near a school. She appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The court considered whether Congress had exceeded its commerce power in enacting the statute.
In March 1992, Alfonso Lopez, Jr., a twelfth-grade student at Edison High School in San Antonio, Texas, arrived at school carrying a concealed .38-caliber handgun and five bullets. Acting on an anonymous tip, school authorities confronted Lopez, who admitted possessing the weapon. Local police arrested him and charged him under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The following day, state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. A federal grand jury indicted him on one count of knowing possession of a firearm at a school zone. Lopez moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statute exceeded Congress's power to legislate control over public schools. The district court denied the motion, concluding that the statute was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to regulate activities affecting commerce because the business of schools affects interstate commerce. After a bench trial, the court found Lopez guilty and sentenced him to six months' imprisonment and two years of supervised release. Lopez appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which reversed the conviction, holding that the statute was beyond Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
View caseUriah Urban was convicted of mail fraud after the trial judge instructed the jury on his failure to testify. He appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The court reviewed the unpreserved instructional error under the plain-error standard.
In March 1944 petitioner Fisher, the janitor at the library of the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Washington, D.C., killed librarian Catherine Cooper Reardon inside the library building between eight and nine o'clock on the morning of March 1. Reardon had complained a few days earlier to the verger about Fisher's care of the premises, and the verger had informed Fisher of the complaint. Fisher and Reardon were alone in the library at the time of the homicide. Fisher testified that Reardon spoke insulting words about his work, after which he slapped her impulsively. He ran up a flight of steps toward an exit but turned back, seized a stick of firewood, struck her, and when the stick broke choked her to silence. He then dragged her to a lavatory and left the body to clean up some spots of blood on the floor outside. While Fisher was doing this cleaning up, the victim started hollering again. Fisher then took out his knife and stuck her in the throat. After that he dragged her body down into an adjoining pump pit, where it was found the next morning. Fisher's accounts of the events varied. His original confession made no reference to insulting words from Reardon. His written confession mentioned them, and his trial testimony amplified their effect on him. In the written confession he admitted his main reason for assaulting her was that she had reported him for not cleaning the floor. The Deputy Coroner testified that the knife wound was not deep and only went through the skin. Defense psychiatrists testified that Fisher was a psychopathic personality of a predominantly aggressive type, mentally somewhat below average, with minor stigmata of mental subnormalcy, and that he was unable by reason of a deranged mental condition to resist the impulse to kill. The prosecution introduced competent evidence that Fisher was capable of understanding the nature and quality of his acts. All evidence offered by the defense was received by the trial court. Fisher was tried in the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia on an indictment charging killing by choking and strangling with deliberate and premeditated malice. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the first count, and the court imposed a sentence of death. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed the judgment and sentence.
View caseUltimate Solutions challenged a federal firearms registration requirement after an adverse district court ruling. It appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The court examined the constitutionality of the registration provision under the Second Amendment.
In 1995 Samuel Mullet purchased land in Jefferson County, Ohio. That land became the Bergholz Amish community in 2001 when a sufficient number of ordained ministers qualified it as a separate Amish church district. The new community appointed Mullet as its bishop. As bishop, Mullet controlled all aspects of life in the Bergholz compound and had the ability to order the shunning of community members who failed to follow the tenets of their Amish faith. In 2006 Mullet excommunicated several church members who questioned Bergholz community practices and his leadership. Included in the group were Lavern and Mattie Troyer, whose son Aden was married to Mullet's daughter Wilma, as well as Melvin and Anna Shrock, whose son Emanuel was married to Mullet's daughter Linda. The excommunications led to family divisions, including a divorce and a custody dispute. Amish bishops from across the country met and voted unanimously to reverse the excommunications. From September 6 to November 9, 2011, several Bergholz community members committed five separate attacks on nine different individuals connected to the community by family or religious ties. The assailants sliced off the men's beards and cut the women's hair. The victims were seen as Amish hypocrites by the assailants. A federal grand jury indicted sixteen members of the Bergholz community for violating and conspiring to violate the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, as well as other charges. At trial, the government presented evidence that the assaults were motivated by the victims' religion, while the defendants presented evidence of personal and family disputes as alternative motives. The jury convicted all sixteen defendants of at least one hate-crime violation. The district court instructed the jury that the victims' religion need only be a significant motivating factor even if other reasons existed. The defendants twice requested a but-for causation instruction, which the court rejected. The defendants appealed their convictions to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
View caseThe rules apply to proceedings before United States district courts, bankruptcy and magistrate judges, courts of appeals, the Court of Federal Claims, and certain territorial district courts.
There are thirteen courts of appeals: twelve regional circuits covering multiple states and the District of Columbia, plus the Federal Circuit with specialized subject-matter jurisdiction.
These courts review convictions and sentences from district courts, applying standards such as plain-error review for unpreserved claims and harmless-error analysis for preserved claims.
…view is not novel. In 1792 an act directing the Secretary at War to place on the pension list disabled officers reported by the circuit courts was deemed unconstitutional so far as it imposed duties on the courts, and after a repeal Congress provided a different mode and enacted that the Secretary of War in conjunction with the…