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 Rules of Civil Procedure. State and federal courts maintain separate procedural rules. On the federal level, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern the process of civil litigation at the level of the U.S. district court, which is a trial court. At least one U.S. district court operates in each state. Each district court also exists within one of thirteen federal circuits.