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.
Federal court is a term used to describe the system of courts in the United States that have jurisdiction at the Federal, or national level. The Federal system of courts oversees matters concerning the United States Constitution and Federal laws, rules and regulations. This is in distinction to the state court system, which has jurisdiction over matters concerning the laws, rules and regulations of the individual states. The Federal court system consists of three different levels. The first or lowest level in the Federal court system consists of the U.S. District Court.