What's the difference between a circuit court and federal supreme court?

Question

And do they belong to different systems? What’s their functions? Please provide me with an example.

Answer 1

There are separate court systems for state and federal. The different systems have different jurisdictions, that is types of cases they can hear.

In the federal court system, there are levels of courts. The lowest level is the federal district court, which is the trial court. This is where federal cases start.

The next level up is the US Circuit Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from the District Court. Each Circuit covers a certain amount of states. For example, California is covered by the 9th Circuit.

The U.S. Supreme Court can choose which appeals to hear from the Circuit Court and resolves constitutional issues. The U.S. Supreme Court can also hear appeals from the individual State supreme courts and is the highest court of the land. The Supreme Court will not hear cases that have not gone through the district court and circuit court first.

So an example. A person gets arrested after the FBI uses a wiretap and he is prosecuted in District Court for terrorism. He gets convicted and appeals to the Circuit Court because of the illegal wiretap. The Circuit Court does not conduct a new trial, but decides the wiretap was illegal government action. The government appeals to the US Supreme Court to resolve the constitutionality of the wiretap.

Answer 2

The Circuit Courts of Appeal are the appellate level of courts just below the U.S. Supreme Court. They hear appeals from District Courts (federal courts located in each state) and certain other federal courts and administrative agencies.

Answer 3

Circuit court has a fewer area of jurisdiction while a federal court has jurisdiction of all cases within the boundaries of a state.

The Circuit court is a court of first instance while the federal court has both original and appellate jurisdiction.