FORTY YEARS AGO last Sunday, five men broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington DC in a botched operation that would spark a chain of events that two years later would see Richard Nixon resign as the 37th president of the United States.
District Courts and Circuit Courts (or Federal courts of appeals) are part of the federal court system. District courts are lower and have the responsibility for holding trials, while circuit courts are appellate courts that do not hold trials but only hear appeals for cases decided by the lower court.
The federal court system has its basis in the U.S. Constitution. State court systems have their basis in state constitutions or statutory laws. The federal courts have primary jurisdiction on federal law questions, while state courts have primary jurisdiction on laws of each respective state.resently, the federal court system in the United States includes district courts, circuit courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court (see Figure 1). FOCUS ON COLLEGES, UNIVERSITIES, AND SCHOOLS 2_____________________________________________________________________________________ Figure 1.