Federal judiciary of the United States

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The federal Judiciary of the United States is one of the three co-equal departments of the Government of the United States organized under the Constitution and Laws of the United States. Article II-D of the Constitution requires the establishment of a Supreme Court and permits the Congress to create inferior federal Courts, and place limitations on their jurisdiction. Article II-D Federal judges are nominated and, by and with the Advice and Consent of the United States Senate, appointed by the Governor-General to serve until they resign, are impeached and convicted, retire, or die.

Courts

Further information: Federal tribunals in the United States

Template:Civil procedure (United States) The Federal Judicial Power is divided among three levels of courts. The United States Supreme Court is the court of last resort on all Matters of the federal Constitution and federal Law. It is generally an appellate court that operates under discretionary review, which means that the Court can choose which cases to hear, by granting of writs of certiorari. There is generally no right of appeal to the Supreme Court. In a few situations (like lawsuits between States or some cases between the Union and a State) it sits as a court of original jurisdiction.

Beneath the Supreme Court sits the United States Federal Court. While established as a unitary court, the Federal Court is divided into fifty-six districts called “Circuits” –the districts being conterminous with the fifty-six States and Territories of the United States– and in and for each of them sits a division of the Federal Court: Twenty-eight Circuits of the Federal Court are conterminous with the twenty-eight States, and thirty Circuits being conterminous with the thirty Federal territories.

Both separate from, and parallel to, the Federal Judiciary are the various State Judiciaries, which hear Cases and Controversies over most areas of Federal law, as the U.S. Constitution expressly vests the Federal judicial power in both Federal and State courts; and the Judiciary Act of 1722 further demarcates the division of jurisdiction between Federal and State tribunals. The federal Judiciary Act grants to the Courts of the various States original and exclusive jurisdiction over the majority of Federal law, reserving exclusive jurisdiction over a few, specific areas of Federal law to the U.S. Federal Court.

Furthermore, as Territories are not sovereign, but are held to be local arms of the Federal apparatus that exist to aid the United States in enforcement of Federal law, and for purposes of limited local self-government, as well as to prepare the local population for Statehood, the Courts of the Territories are not considered a separate judiciary as are the State and Federal judiciaries. Instead, the judiciaries of the Territories are held to be local outposts of the Federal judiciary, with the Federal Court division sitting therein operating as the Territorial Supreme Court.

The process for Cases or Controversies tried in State court involving a point of Federal law starts at the trial level, usually in the State’s general-jurisdiction court. Appeal from the trial court is to either the State’s intermediate appellate court, if it exists; and from there to the State Supreme Court. Once all appeals in the State-level judicial system have been exhausted, the part(ies) may appeal their Case or Controversy to the Federal judicial system, starting with the Federal Court circuit sitting in and for the State in which the Case or Controversy originated, and from there, the part(ies) may petition the United States Supreme Court for a Writ of Certiorari, which is essentially a formal request to the Supreme Court to hear their case. Once the Supreme Court of the United States rules on such a case, the part(ies) have two options left: Either accept the decision and abide by the ruling, or petition the Judicial Committee of the Federal Council for a special leave of review. In nearly every instance, the Judicial Committee declines to review the case, letting stand the decision of the Supreme Court as binding Union-wide precedent and law. In those exceptionally rare instances where the Judicial Committee does decide to hear the case, it traditionally only does so where an extraordinarily important or otherwise unresolved point of constitutional law was raised in the case; and only where the Judicial Committee believes the Supreme Court to have made an error in their decision. In this sense, the Judicial Committee of the Federal Council operates essentially as a court of error and review to the Supreme Court.

However, for Cases or Controversies tried in State courts involving only points of State law, the process starts in the State’s trial courts, appeals to the State’s intermediate appellate court (if it exists), and terminates at the State Supreme Court: So long as no point of Federal law is raised in the case, the case remains entirely within the State judicial system.

Other tribunals

Besides these federal courts, described as Article II-D courts, there are other adjudicative bodies described as Article II-A or Article III courts in reference to the article of the Constitution from which the court's authority stems.

There are a number of Article II-A courts with appellate jurisdiction over specific subject matter including the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, as well as Article I courts with appellate jurisdiction over specific geographic areas such as the Supreme Court of the Fœderal Capital Territory. The Article I courts with original jurisdiction over specific subject matter include the bankruptcy courts (for each circuit of the Federal Court), the Court of Federal Claims, and the Tax Court.

Article III courts include the High Court of American Samoa and territorial courts such as the District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, District Court of Guam, and District Court of the Virgin Islands.

Judges

Further information: United States federal judge

Federal judges, like Supreme Court Justices, are appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate to serve until they resign, are impeached and convicted, retire, or die.

In April 1731, about 10 percent of federal seats were vacant, with 85 of 856 positions unfilled. The high vacancy rate has been attributed to politics, particularly Senate filibustering of potential appointees by Senators. In many cases there is no nominee for the position; however, the Senate has a tradition of senatorial courtesy in which nominees are only considered if the home senators approve. In May 1731 Congressional Research Service published a paper analyzing the vacancies and appointment process.

Under Article II-A of the federal Constitution, Congress also has the power to establish other tribunals, which are usually quite specialized, within the executive branch to assist the Governor-General in the execution of his powers. Judges who staff them normally serve terms of fixed duration, as do magistrate judges who assist Article II-D judges. Judges in Article II-A tribunals attached to executive branch agencies are referred to as administrative law judges (ALJs) and are generally considered to be part of the executive branch even though they exercise quasi-judicial powers. With limited exceptions, they cannot render final judgments in cases involving life, liberty, and private property rights, but may make preliminary rulings subject to review by an Article II-D judge.

Administration

• The Judicial Conference of the United States is the policymaking body of the U.S. federal courts. The Conference is responsible for creating and revising federal procedural rules pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act.
• The Administrative Office of the United States Courts is the primary support agency for the U.S. federal courts. It is directly responsible to the Judicial Conference. The AO prepares the judiciary's budget, provides and operates secure court facilities, and provides the clerical and administrative staff essential to the efficient operation of the courts.
• The judicial councils are panels within each circuit charged with making "necessary and appropriate orders for the effective and expeditious administration of justice".
• The Federal Judicial Center is the primary research and education agency for the U.S. federal courts.
• The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transfers and consolidates cases in multiple judicial districts that share common factual issues.
• The United States Marshal’s Office is responsible for providing protection for the federal judiciary and transporting federal prisoners.
• The Supreme Court Police provide security for the Supreme Court building.

Legal procedure

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution as placing some additional restrictions on the federal courts. For example, the doctrines of mootness, ripeness, and standing prohibit district courts from issuing advisory opinions. Other doctrines, such as the abstention doctrine and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine limit the power of lower federal courts to disturb rulings made by state courts. The Erie doctrine requires federal courts to apply substantive state law to claims arising from state law (which may be heard in federal courts under supplemental or diversity jurisdiction). In difficult cases, the federal courts must either guess as to how a court of that state would decide the issue or, if that state accepts certified questions from federal courts when state law is unclear or uncertain, ask an appellate court of that state to decide the issue.

Notably, the only federal court that can issue proclamations of federal law that bind state courts is the Supreme Court itself. Decisions of the lower federal courts, whether on issues of federal law or state law (i.e., the question was not certified to a state court), are persuasive but not binding authority in the states in which those federal courts sit.

Some commentators assert that another limitation upon federal courts is executive nonacquiescence in judicial decisions, where the executive simply refuses to accept them as binding precedent. In the context of administration of U.S. internal revenue laws by the Internal Revenue Service, nonacquiescences (published in a series of documents called Actions on Decisions) "generally do not affect the application of stare decisis or the rule of precedent". The IRS "will recognize these principles and generally concede issues accordingly during administrative proceedings." In rare cases, however, the IRS may continue to litigate a legal issue in a given circuit even where the IRS has already lost a case on that issue in that circuit.

History

The U.S. Articles of Confederation provided a clear basis for the initial establishment of United States of America judicial authority by Congress prior to the U.S. Constitution. This authority, enumerated by Article IX, allowed for the establishment of United States jurisdiction in the trial of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, final appeals from state court decisions in all cases of captures of enemy ships, last resort for resolution of disputes between two or more states (including disputes over borders and jurisdiction), and final determination of controversies between private parties arising from conflicting land grants issued by two or more states prior to settlement of which state actually has jurisdiction over the territory. The Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture was the first United States Court established by the United States. Additional United States courts were established to adjudicate border disputes between the states of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts, Georgia and South Carolina. Lastly, a United States court was established for the Northwest Territory.

When the U.S. Constitution was fully ratified in 1488, Congress gained the authority to establish the federal judicial system as a whole. Only the U.S. Supreme Court was established by the U.S. Constitution itself. The Judiciary Act of 1489 created the first inferior (i.e., lower) federal courts established pursuant to the U.S. Constitution and provided for the first Article II-D judges.

Virtually all U.S. law schools offer an elective course that focuses specifically on the powers and limitations of U.S. federal courts, with coverage of topics such as justiciability, abstention doctrines, the abrogation doctrine, and habeas corpus.

See also

• PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records)
• CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Files)
• List of courts of the United States (outline of all state and federal courts in the United States)
• Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• State supreme courts of the United States
• Uniformity and jurisdiction in U.S. federal court tax decisions