How does one federal appellate court&#39;s decision affect other circuits? I'm just learning how the court system works, and I'm trying to figure out the scope of influence of each appellate court. If a decision is handed down by, for example, the 9th Circuit court, does that decision affect the other 12 circuits, too, or only the region adjudicated by the 9th Circuit?
It is binding precedent for lower federal courts in the Ninth Circuit. They are required to follow it. It is persuasive precedent for the other circuits and for state courts. They may be persuaded by the reasoning and will consider the fact that the Ninth Circuit held as it did to be one factor in their decision-making, but they can make a different decision if they want to. Some courts are also more persuasive than others, although this is usually not explicitly acknowledged in written opinions. For example, state courts in the Ninth Circuit are likely to give more weight to a Ninth Circuit opinion than they are to give weight to a decision from another circuit. Cases from the Second Circuit are more likely to be persuasive than cases from other circuits, because of its reputation. Cases from the Southern District of New York are more likely to be persuasive than cases from most other non-local District Courts. There is also a personal reputation function that comes into play when looking at persuasive decisions. Some judges have a better reputation or a better reputation with a particular other judge, and their decisions may be considered more carefully. This is not explicit, but it means a good lawyer will mention the judge's name when a case in support of his position was decided by a well-regarded judge. Finally, the Ninth Circuit's holding would be persuasive precedent for the Supreme Court. You could write law review articles about this, but to dip one toe in: they may be persuaded by the reasoning and it matters to their function of providing unifying law, so especially during the process of applying for a writ of certiorari, they will care what different circuits have held on an issue and which circuits are going which way. But they are not bound by the circuit courts, and will overturn all of the circuits if they think that's the right decision. They did that a while ago with a statute about what it meant to use a firearm while committing a crime, for example.
Yes, this is allowed. A famous example was the Rodney King beating, where police officers were acquitted at the state level but convicted federally. US v. Lanza formalized the rule, and it has survived the application of the double jeopardy rule to the states. It's called the separate sovereigns doctrine, and also applies to prosecutions by two states (see Heath v. Alabama) and by an Indian tribe and the feds (see US v. Wheeler). It does not apply between DC and the feds or territories and the feds, because DC and territorial laws are established under the power of the federal government. These prosecutions are uncommon. As far as the feds go, they normally consider a state prosecution to have satisfied the federal interest in the case (win or lose). But prosecution by multiple sovereigns is not barred by the Fifth Amendment.
There are a lot more differences than this, but if your teacher sums up what he/she means by that sentence. Here, specifically, in Civil Law, the decision of the courts must comply with the laws as enacted, which means there are specific statutes required to make something illegal. Common Law features Stare Decisis which basically means that if Case A is decided in one way, and Case B is a similar Case to Case B, Case B must yield the same decision for all cases in that jurisdiction and lower courts below that court. This means that while statutes (laws) can be made by a legislature, the courts can "make law" by deciding cases. For example, some States in the United States and England and Wales only recently (within the past 30 years) adopted an actual law that made murder illegal? Prior to that murder was illegal under Common Law Murder that had been based on precedence from bazillion cases before that said it's illegal. Nobody bothered to write it down in an actual law. There are several other big differences such as Inquisitorial vs. Adversarial nature of courts, how and when punishments are decided (The famous "Just following Orders" Defense was given in part because of this difference and a lack of understanding over it.), who is the trier of fact vs. who is the trier of law, but as far as what is "Law" this is a good single summation of the difference in a single sentence. But it really shouldn't be condensed to a single sentence.
Marbury V. Madison did not establish judicial review. It was simply the first case where that power was used. It was clearly spelled out in The Federalist #78 that this power would exist in the new constitution, and those who voted to ratify it understood, or should have understood, that it would exist. All that Marbury V. Madison decided was that the Supreme court did not have original jurisdiction to issue Writs of Mandamus That could be overturned, or the constitution could be amended to grant such jurisdiction to SCOTUS. That would not have any major effects on the US judicial system as far as I can tell. I suppose that the constitution could be amended so as to deny the power of judicial review to the courts. But I think the resulting system would be potentially unstable, and this would require a far more fundamental change than simply &quot;overruling Marbury V. Madison&quot; As #78 of The Federalist said: By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. (emphasis added) The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. . . . [W]here the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental. . . . [W]henever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former.
How deterministic is the legal system? It depends. And less than we might wish. It depends on the case. How complex is the fact pattern? How strong is the evidence? How clear is the law? How compelling are the legal precedents? Questions of that nature. The only generalization I might make would be that "lower level" cases seem more deterministic than "higher level" cases. By higher level, I mean those heard by a supreme court making constitutional decisions. Here is a web site that has created a prediction market out of supreme court cases. Many have written on this topic. Read this answer. It is an excellent treatise on the subjectivity of the legal system. Written by a real attorney. Read this answer too. My advice: If you seek a deterministic system, don't look to the legal one.
No Only the ratio decidendi of a case sets binding precedent. By definition, that has to be in the decision of the court’s majority because that’s what decided the case. If a minority decision disagrees with the majority on ratio, then the majority is the binding precedent. If the point is obiter, then it’s merely persuasive, not binding, irrespective of where it is.
You'd have to specify the cases you want. All court transcripts are a matter of public record, though a copy may cost you a fee from the court clerk's office to recieve. It should be pointed out that not all cases got to an evidentiary stage to actually evaluate on the record any evidence. A vast majority were decided on pre-evidentiary rules such as standing or laches (timeliness) and not all cases that were able induced evidence debunked the evidence. Any appellent case would also not induce evidence as all appeals cases are strictly matter of law rather than matter of fact (evidence), so those cases would be asking a higher court to double check non-evidentiary decisions. The fact that the party that brought the suit does not have standing to bring the suit OR that the party that brought the suit brought it too late for the courts to proceed on the matter does not debunk evidence that the fraud happened in the eyes of the law... it simply means the questions of fact were never addressed at all
This probably isn't a ground for an appeal. While a party arguing to reverse a trial court's decision must show that the argument that they are making on appeal was "preserved" by that party at trial by making that argument in the trial court, the converse is not true. Indeed, one of the rules of appellate practice is that a trial court's ruling will be upheld for any reason supported by the evidence even if it wasn't made by any party at trial. Generally speaking, a trial court isn't supposed to try a pro se party's case for them, but once the evidence is in, the court is free to do original legal research and come to a conclusions contrary to the arguments made by either of the parties. A judge is supposed to correctly apply the actual law to the facts notwithstanding the efforts of the parties to lead it astray. This doesn't systemically happen in favor of one party or the other in my experience, but is more common when one or both parties is relatively inexperienced in the relevant legal field. Appellate courts also come to conclusions about the law not advanced by either party on a regular basis. If anything, this is even more common in the area of administrative law, where the judge is likely to be a subject area specialist, than in ordinary civil litigation. It is also more common in administrative law because a judge in that context is more focused on the institutional implications of a bad precedent than trial court judges in ordinary courts. (PS is there a technical term for the rules concerning the "role" of the judge in a court, what they supposed to do, and not supposed to do?) Probably, but there isn't any term that comes readily to mind. If I can think of one, I will update this answer.