Legal Question in Constitutional Law in Texas

Re: Federal Law Questions

The circuit courts have varying numbers of judges; the Ninth Circuit has 28, plus several semi-retired judges who still hear cases. The other circuits are much smaller but have less populous jurisdictions. No circuit judge has his or her own jurisdiction; instead, the entire circuit has jurisdiction over its assigned territory and each judge gets his or her share of cases from throughout that territory.

Appellate courts -- both state and federal -- generally assign three judges to each case. These three judges hear the oral argument together and usually issue a single opinion, which one of them signes but with which the others concur. When one of the judges disagrees with the other two, the majority prevails and the other judge will write a separate, dissenting opinion. Even a judge who agrees with the majority decision can add a concurring opinion explaining different reasons for reaching the same result.

If at least two judges agree that the statute at issue in a given case is unconstitutional then the ruling applies to all district court judges throughout the circuit. While it does not control how judges elsewhere must deal with the statute, they will often be persuaded by the decision's logic.

The losing party has the option of asking the same three-judge panel to rehear the case and/or asking the entire court (or, in the case of the Ninth Circuit, an eleven-judge panel) to consider the issue and reverse the decision. If such a petition leads the court to declare the statute valid, then the prior ruling becomes void.

The disappointed party can then ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. If that court takes the case and rules on the validity of the statute, its ruling controls nationwide. The Supreme Court will often step in when some of the circuits have reached opposite results on the same question, so that there will be a uniform answer which governs nationwide.

State courts have comparable authority, but only over their own states' statutes. They cannot invalidate federal statutes or those of other states. Federal courts, in contrast, can invalidate federal statutes as well as statutes from the states where the court has jurisdiction.

Most states have multiple appellate courts for various parts of the state, but the effect which a decision of one such court has on the others varies from one state to another. Here in California, the opinions of all appellate courts are theoretically of equal weight, but as a practical matter trial courts will follow the decisions of their local courts where there is a split of authority. Just this week I won an appeal in such a case by persuading an appellate court to overrule two of its prior decisions. The trial court had followed this appellate court's lead instead of following other courts which had decided the issue differently; she correctly applied the local precedent but was reversed because the Court of Appeal decided the precedent itself had been mistaken.