Blog 3.5

1. Where do the district court and appellate court fit into the organization of the federal courts?
The district court is a trial court within the Ninth Circuit; the appellate court is one step higher on the ladder and oversees all individual districts.

2. What makes the 9th Circuit stand out from the other circuit courts?
The Ninth Circuit is by far the largest federal appellate court, with 29 judges. (The Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, is second, with 17.) The Ninth covers a population of 64.3 million people, according to the latest Census data, or nearly 20 percent of the US.

3. What historical cause may make this Circuit Court more liberal than others?
The Court’s reputation arguably derives from its transformation under President Jimmy Carter. While Carter was the only the fourth president to make no appointments to the Supreme Court, he did appoint 15 people to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, out of 23 judges total at the time.
4. Give two examples of very liberal decisions that have come from judges on this court.
He wrote the Ninth Circuit’s opinion striking down California’s same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8 in 2012, ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t recognize an individual right to bear arms, and argued that bans on assisted suicide are unconstitutional.
5. What happens to most appellate court decisions when they reach the Supreme Court?
Most of its rulings that make it to the Supreme Court are overturned.
6. Which Circuit Courts are overturned more often than the 9th Circuit?
The Supreme Court reversed about 70 percent of the cases it took, and 79 percent from the Ninth Circuit. But it reversed 87 percent of Sixth Circuit rulings, and 85 percent of 11th Circuit rulings, both of which are notably more conservative courts than the Ninth.
7. Does the ideology of the court impact how often the Supreme Court overturns their rulings?  How do we know?

No because both are somewhat even in how they are overturned. The statistics show that Supreme Court justices must be unbiased.

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