Federal Court Concepts

Objectives

This free online module, Federal Court Concepts, is designed to introduce secondary and postsecondary students to the American federal court system. It contains basic information about the structure of the federal courts, what kind of cases that federal courts hear, and how to use federal court decisions in research.

After completing this module, students should be able to:

• Understand the differences and similarities between the various types of federal courts.
• Identify the levels of the federal court system.
• Grasp the basic principles of legal research.

Index of Contents

• Introduction to Federal Courts
  An overview of the federal court system.
• Structure of the Federal Courts
  A description of how federal courts are organized.
• Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts
  A guide to the types of cases that federal courts routinely hear.
• Federal District Courts
  Information about the lowest level of federal courts.
• Federal Courts of Appeal
  Information about the intermediate level of federal courts.
• Supreme Court
  Information about the "highest court in the land."
• Other Federal Courts
  Information about federal courts with special jurisdictions.
• About Legal Research
  An introduction to how students can research court decisions, and integrate these decisions into their research.
• Resources for Federal Court System
• Glossary of Module
  Words found in the glossary have this icon:
• Accessibility of Module
  An overview of accessibility plus information on courtroom access for people with disabilities.

  For more on the process of creating the module and its accessibility features,
  review Closing the Circuit: Accessibility from the Ground Up.

Link to Module

(Select the image below to go to the module)

Development & Support

This module is maintained by the Southeast ADA Center, one of ten regional centers in the ADA National Network on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and a project of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University.

• For questions or comments on this module, contact the Southeast ADA Center.
• For more information on the ADA or web access, contact your ADA Center at 1-800-949-4232 (voice/tty).

This module was originally developed by Curtis D. Edmonds, J.D. under the Georgia Tech Research on Accessible Distance Education (GRADE) project at the Georgia Tech Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA) in 2003 with funding by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Post Secondary Education (OPE) under Grant #P333A020050.