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.
In this way, circuit courts can be very influential as they are able to set a legal precedent when deciding appeals. The most distinct differences between the district and circuit courts are as follows: 1  Procedural rules. 2  Only district courts follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 3  Each geographical area within the circuit courts may have its own procedural rules. 4  Number of judges per case.