The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts are divided into 11 numbered multi-state circuits that each hear appeals from the U.S. district courts within their borders, the D.C. Circuit that only hears appeals from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the Federal Circuit that hears appeals from specialized trial courts, primarily the United States Court of International Trade and the United States Court of Federal Claims, as well as appeals from the district courts in patent cases and certain other specialized matters. Appeals from the circuit courts are taken to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In law, an en banc session is a session in which a case is heard before all the judges of a court rather than by one judge or a smaller panel of judges.
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts:
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States labor law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons. The FMLA was a major part of President Bill Clinton's first-term domestic agenda, and he signed it into law on February 5, 1993. The FMLA is administered by the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor.
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served since January 31, 2006. He is the second Italian-American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, after Antonin Scalia, and the eleventh Roman Catholic.
Diane Schwerm Sykes is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.
David Bryan Sentelle is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Muth v. Frank, 412 F.3d 808, was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the denial to an individual of a writ of habeas corpus for violation of Wisconsin's laws criminalizing incest was not unconstitutional. The petitioners relied heavily on the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas invalidating anti-sodomy laws two years prior, which the Seventh Circuit rejected.
Sandra Segal Ikuta is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
David Brookman Smith, known professionally as D. Brooks Smith, is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was previously Chief Judge of both the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and is the only judge in the history of the Third Circuit to have served as both a chief district judge and chief of the Court of Appeals. Beginning January 2022, Smith will begin to serve as Penn State Law's new jurist in residence.
Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was "narrowly targeted" at "sex-based overgeneralization" and was thus a "valid exercise of [congressional] power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Jerry Edwin Smith is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Roger Thomas Benitez is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. He is known for his opinions striking down several California gun control laws.
Monroe Gunn McKay was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc., 537 U.S. 418 (2003), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that, under the Lanham Act, a claim of trademark dilution requires proof of actual dilution. This decision was later superseded by the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 (TDRA).
Cornelia Thayer Livingston Pillard, known professionally as Nina Pillard, is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a judge, Pillard was a tenured law professor at Georgetown University.
Kisor v. Wilkie, No. 18-15, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a US Supreme Court case related to the interpretation by an executive agency of its own ambiguous regulations. The case involved a veteran who had been denied some benefits from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs due to the agency's interpretation of its regulations. The case challenges the "Auer deference" established in the 1997 case Auer v. Robbins, in which the judiciary branch of the government normally defers to an agency's own interpretation of its own regulations in resolving matters of law. Lower courts, including the Federal Appeals Circuit Courts, ruled against the veteran, acknowledging the Auer deference.
