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.
What is the difference between trial and appellate courts? In both state and federal courts, there are trial courts, where cases are first heard, and appellate or âhigherâ courts, which review decisions from trial courts. To appeal a case means to petition an appellate court to overturn or modify a decision of the trial or âlowerâ court. (See Appealing a Conviction and Criminal Writs.) In the state systems, the names of criminal courts vary greatly from state to state.