How Many Courts of Appeals Are There? The 13 Circuits

There are 13 United States Courts of Appeals. Eleven are numbered regional circuits covering defined groups of states and territories, one is the D.C. Circuit in Washington, and one is the Federal Circuit, which hears specific kinds of cases from anywhere in the country. Congress currently authorizes 179 active judgeships across all 13 courts.¹

Federal law spells out each circuit and assigns states and territories to it.² When someone loses in a federal district court, the appeal goes to whichever circuit that district sits in. The routing is automatic. Rulings from one circuit bind every district court within that circuit but carry no binding authority in other circuits, which is why the Supreme Court often steps in when circuits disagree on the same question.

The 11 Numbered Regional Circuits

The statute assigns states and territories to each numbered circuit as follows:²

First Circuit: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico.
Second Circuit: Connecticut, New York, and Vermont.
Third Circuit: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands.
Fourth Circuit: Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Fifth Circuit: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Sixth Circuit: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Seventh Circuit: Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
Eighth Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Ninth Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Tenth Circuit: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming.
Eleventh Circuit: Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.

The Ninth Circuit is by far the largest, spanning nine states and two Pacific territories. Its size gives it the heaviest caseload and the most authorized judgeships of any circuit. The Northern Mariana Islands sits in the Ninth because federal law assigns it to the same judicial circuit as Guam.³ The Eleventh Circuit is the youngest of the numbered circuits, created in 1981 when Congress split Alabama, Florida, and Georgia off from an overburdened Fifth Circuit.⁴

The D.C. Circuit

The D.C. Circuit covers only the District of Columbia, but its docket is anything but small. Because most federal agencies are headquartered in Washington, challenges to agency rules and executive actions frequently land here. Lawyers who work in administrative law consider this court second only to the Supreme Court in influence over how the federal government operates.

The Federal Circuit

The Federal Circuit works differently from every other circuit. Instead of covering a geographic area, it has nationwide jurisdiction over specific subject matter. Congress created it through the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982, consolidating appeals that previously bounced between different courts with inconsistent results. Under federal law, the Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over appeals involving patents, decisions from the Court of Federal Claims, rulings from the Court of International Trade, certain international trade disputes, and federal employee merit system cases, among other specialized areas.⁵ Funneling these technically complex disputes to one court is meant to produce more uniform law than letting 12 regional circuits reach 12 different conclusions.

How Judges Sit on These Courts

Circuit court judges are Article III judges, nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serving lifetime appointments during good behavior.⁶ The 179 authorized judgeships are distributed unevenly across circuits based on caseload, with the Ninth Circuit having the most seats and smaller circuits like the First having far fewer.

For a typical appeal, three judges are randomly assigned to hear the case and decide it by majority vote.⁷ Which three judges land on your panel can meaningfully affect the outcome, and litigants have no say in the selection. The random draw prevents judge-shopping and ensures that a circuit’s full range of perspectives gets reflected over time.

En Banc Hearings

When a three-judge panel issues a ruling that conflicts with another panel’s decision in the same circuit, or when a case raises a question of exceptional importance, a majority of the circuit’s active judges can order an en banc rehearing.⁷ In most circuits, an en banc court means all active judges sitting together. The Ninth Circuit is the exception. Because it has so many judges, federal law allows circuits with more than 15 active judges to use a smaller en banc panel, and the Ninth Circuit’s consists of 11 judges drawn by lot from the active bench plus the chief judge. En banc hearings are rare and explicitly disfavored by the rules, reserved for situations where uniformity within the circuit is at stake or the legal question is significant enough to justify the full court’s attention.⁸

Senior Judges

Federal appellate judges who meet combined age-and-service requirements (commonly called the “Rule of 80,” where age plus years of federal judicial service equals at least 80) can take senior status. That is a form of semi-retirement: the judge continues hearing cases on a reduced schedule, and the seat opens up for the President to fill with a new active judge. Senior judges collectively handle a significant share of the federal appellate workload, which is one reason the system doesn’t collapse under the volume of filings despite chronic vacancies on the active bench.

What These Courts Do With a Case

Appellate courts don’t retry cases. They don’t hear witnesses, consider new evidence, or second-guess a jury’s reading of the facts. Their job is to review the existing trial record and decide whether the lower court got the law right.⁹ How closely they look depends on the type of issue being challenged.

De novo review applies to pure legal questions. The appellate court owes no deference to the trial judge and decides the issue from scratch.
Clearly erroneous review applies to the trial court’s factual findings. The appellate court defers to the judge who actually saw the witnesses and will reverse only if left with “a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made.”
Abuse of discretion applies to judgment calls the trial court made within its authority, such as evidentiary rulings or case management decisions. This is the hardest standard to overcome.

Federal appellate courts have broad authority to affirm, modify, vacate, reverse, or remand any case properly before them.¹⁰ Affirmed means the lower court’s decision stands. Reversed means the appellate court finds the ruling was wrong and overturns it. Vacated means the court wipes the decision off the books without necessarily saying it was wrong, which often happens when a change in law makes the original ruling questionable. Remanded means the case goes back to the trial court for additional proceedings consistent with the appellate opinion, and most reversals and vacations come paired with a remand. The majority of appeals end in affirmance. These courts are not a second bite at the apple; they’re a check on legal errors, and most trial courts don’t commit reversible ones.

1
Congress.gov. Figures
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 41 – Number and Composition of Circuits
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 48 USC 1821 – District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands
4
Federal Judicial Center. Eleventh Circuit
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1295 – Jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
6
United States Courts. Types of Federal Judges
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 46 – Assignment of Judges; Panels; Hearings; Quorum
8
Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 40 – Panel Rehearing; En Banc Determination
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1291 – Final Decisions of District Courts
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2106