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 courts hear both criminal and civil cases. The federal system has three levels, one trial court level and two appellate court levels. The trial court level, where complaints are filed and where the actual trials occur, is called the district court because the federal system is divided into districts. Illinois has three districts: the Northern District (Chicago), the Central District (Springfield), and the Southern District (East St. Louis).