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freelawproject / courtlistener

A fully-searchable and accessible archive of court data including growing repositories of opinions, oral arguments, judges, judicial financial records, and federal filings.
https://www.courtlistener.com
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Add 1801 circuit courts, 1869 circuit courts, and associated opinions #626

Open elliottash opened 7 years ago

elliottash commented 7 years ago

Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_circuit_court

"The United States circuit courts were the original intermediate level courts of the United States federal court system. They were established by the Judiciary Act of 1789. They had trial court jurisdiction over civil suits of diversity jurisdiction and major federal crimes. They also had appellate jurisdiction over the United States district courts. The Judiciary Act of 1891 (26 Stat. 826, also known as the Evarts Act) transferred their appellate jurisdiction to the newly created United States circuit courts of appeals, which are now known as the United States courts of appeals. On January 1, 1912, the effective date of the Judicial Code of 1911, the circuit courts were abolished, with their remaining trial court jurisdiction transferred to the U.S. district courts."

These courts aren't in the database right now.

elliottash commented 7 years ago

Helpfully, the FJC data has a "Court Type" column that specifies whether it is a "USCC (1801)", "USCC (1869)", or just one of the modern "USCC" courts. I think those founding years might be a sensible way to distinguish the courtids as well, eg, for the first circuit: ca1, ca1_1801, and ca1_1869.