General Legal & Policy Research

Federal

United States Federal Courts 

What:The establishment of the Judicial branch by Article III of the U.S. Constitution created an independent federal judiciary consisting of the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
How to search: The U.S. Court Web site offers access to the federal courts' home pages, federal court rules and forms, and federal court rulemaking process.  Below are some of the more useful links and search tools:

• Federal Rules and Forms of the Court- This site provides to links of federal rules and forms used by federal courts.  The links connect users with the rules or forms (in PDF) at the House of Representative Web site.
• Federal Court Rulemaking- Users may access Proposed Rules Amendments Published for Comment, Pending Rules Amendments Awaiting Final Action, and Meetings and Hearings, which enable users to participate in the rulemaking process.  The site also provides a description of the rulemaking process. 
• Local Court Rules- This page provides users with links to local court rules for each district of all four courts of the federal court system.  Clicking on the desired court (e.g.: District Courts) takes users to an alphabetically linked list, organized by state, of District Court rule Web sites.
• Federal Court Locator- To find links to federal courts in your state, click on your state on the locator map. Organized by district, the map lists states' federal court links. 

Last updated:The site does not offer any information on the frequency of updates, although it does offer revision dates on some of the pages.  
Other Web sites: Other Web sites offering access to the Federal Courts include:

• FindLaw.com Court of Appeals and District Court websites link to the official home page of each circuit and district.
• National Center for State Courts Federal Courts page
• Emory School of Law Federal Courts page