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Information A reference post for California and Federal Courts
- Author Librarian
- Creation date
California has state courts -
https://www.courts.ca.gov/
Superior Court (trial courts), Courts of Appeal, Supreme Court
Federal Courts:
United States Courts (Federal Courts) -
https://www.uscourts.gov/
California has EIGHT District Courts (trial courts)
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/federal-courts-public/court-website-links
4 of those are bankruptcy courts, and not interesting here
USDC Central CA - Los Angeles/Riverside/Santa Ana
USDC Eastern CA - Sacramento/Fresno/Redding/Bakersfield/Yosemite
USDC Northern CA - San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose/Eureka
USDC Southern CA - San Diego/El Centro
(Their separate websites are wildly different in form!)
California is included in the area served by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the next level up from the District courts - https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/
See also Wikipedia, good enough for an overview, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Ninth_Circu it
And the whole country gets the United States Supreme Court,
https://www.supremecourtus.gov/,
AKA SCOTUS
Some habits and other resources:
Case Naming:
Cases against governments usually name a government official as defendant; in California, that is usually the current elected Attorney General. So, as AGs change, many cases amend the defendant/plaintiff to the current office holder. I don't think we have any current cases from Jerry Brown, but we do have some from Kamala Harris, Xavier Becerra, and Rob Bonta. Other states, for example Oregon, can name the Governor as defendant.
And Plaintiffs can change, too. The original filing for what ended as Heller began as Parker.
Typically, a case is styled Plaintiff v Defendant, or first named Plaintiff v first named Defendant. That's a convention, not a rule. And the short name used can be confusing; we get cases titled for plaintiffs, usually: Heller, McDonald, Rhode, Duncan, but there are others.
Best recent example case is New York Rifle and Pistol Association Inc v Kevin P. Bruen, in His Official Capacity as Superintendent of New York State Police; the case is commonly known by the defendant Bruen - just easier to say and type, I guess.
Substitutions of parties, plaintiffs and defendants, are usually documented in the case docket, but the docket title may or may not reflect that change.
How to Read a Court docket
https://guides.loc.gov/case-law/dockets-court-filings
https://columbusstate.libguides.com/criminaljustice/howtoreadadocket
? What is PACER ?
https://pacer.uscourts.gov/
The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service provides electronic public access to federal court records. PACER provides the public with instantaneous access to more than 1 billion documents filed at all federal courts.
PACER docs are not free. But there is a re-publishing effort from the Free law Project called RECAP. See Wikipedia, it's good enough - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Law_Project, and Free Law Project is the originator of CourtListener, the common place to see dockets.