US court directory

The United States runs two court systems side by side. One is federal, created by Congress under the Constitution. The other is a state system, and every state has its own. Both hear real disputes between people and businesses. Both issue binding judgments. They overlap in some places and stay separate in others, which is why the same argument can sometimes be filed in either forum. Understanding this structure starts with that basic split.

Dual sovereignty explains the design. When the states ratified the Constitution in 1789, they kept their own governments and their own courts. They handed the new national government a limited set of powers, and Article III gave that government a judiciary. So the federal court system exists to decide questions that belong to the nation as a whole, while each state keeps the vast body of ordinary law that governs daily life. Neither side answers to the other in most matters. A state judge does not report to a federal judge.

Both sides share a shape. Each has trial courts where cases begin, appellate courts that review for legal error, and a court of last resort at the top. A trial court finds facts and applies law. An appellate court does not retry the facts; it checks whether the trial judge got the law right. That three-tier shape repeats on the federal side and in almost every state court system, which makes the whole structure easier to learn than it first looks. The names change from place to place, but the ladder is the same.

The federal courts exist for a narrow set of reasons. They decide cases arising under the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties. They resolve disputes between citizens of different states when enough money is at stake. They handle bankruptcy, admiralty, patent claims, and suits where the United States is a party. Congress drew these boundaries on purpose. A federal court cannot reach out and decide a garden-variety car accident between two neighbors in the same town. That case belongs to the state courts, and it will stay there.

State courts carry the larger load in daily terms. Most contracts, most family matters, most property disputes, most crimes, and most personal injury claims live in the state courts. If you sign a lease, get divorced, probate a will, or fight a speeding ticket, you are almost certainly in state court. These courts reach every corner of ordinary life because states hold the general police power. That phrase means the authority to legislate for health, safety, and general welfare, and the judges who enforce those laws sit inside the state system.

Concurrent jurisdiction is the reason a single dispute can land in either place. Some claims can be heard by both. A contract fight between a company in Texas and a company in Ohio, worth more than seventy-five thousand dollars, meets the federal diversity test. The same fight also violates ordinary state contract law. The plaintiff picks. File in state court, or file in federal court, and the choice carries real consequences for procedure, jury pools, and timing.

Removal gives the defendant a say. When a plaintiff files a case in state court that could have gone to federal court, the defendant may move it across under a federal removal statute. The case leaves one side and enters the other. Plaintiffs sometimes fight to keep a case in state court, and defendants sometimes fight to pull it into federal court, because each side believes the forum favors it. These tugs of war are common in commercial and injury litigation.

The two sides also borrow from each other. A rule from Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins requires a federal court sitting in a diversity case to apply the substantive law of the state where it sits. So a federal judge in Georgia deciding a Georgia contract claim follows Georgia law on the contract, even though federal rules govern the procedure. The court system does not run on a single rulebook. It runs on layered ones, and the layer that applies depends on the type of claim and the forum.

Federal law still sits above state law where the two conflict. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution makes valid federal statutes and the Constitution itself the highest law, so a state court must follow federal law when it controls. A state judge hearing a case that raises a federal right applies that right, even in a state courtroom. This is why the two structures are parallel rather than fully separate. They touch at the points where federal law reaches into state cases, and they part again where only state law applies.

Criminal law splits along the same line. A person can violate a state statute, a federal statute, or both with one act. Robbing a local store is a state crime. Robbing a federally insured bank is a federal crime. Selling drugs across state lines can trigger both. Because the two sovereigns are separate, prosecution by one does not always bar prosecution by the other, a point the Supreme Court addressed in Gamble v. United States. Most defendants meet only one set of courts, and for street-level offenses that is the state system.

Geography ties the two together on the ground. Federal courthouses and state courthouses often sit blocks apart in the same city, sometimes on the same square. A lawyer admitted in one is not automatically admitted in the other. State bar membership lets you appear in that state's courts. A separate admission is needed for each federal district court, and yet another for the courts of appeals. Clients rarely see this paperwork, but it decides who can stand up and argue for them.

Knowing which side owns your dispute is the first practical question in any case. Pick wrong and you lose time, and sometimes you lose the claim to a filing deadline while you refile in the right place. The rest of this guide walks through both halves of the court system in turn. We start with the federal courts, the top court and the trial courts, and then turn to the fifty state systems and the many names they use for the same jobs.

The American court system divides authority between federal and state institutions that operate at the same time. The federal court system hears cases involving constitutional questions, federal statutes, and disputes between citizens of different states. Each state court system handles matters of state law, including most contracts, family disputes, property claims, and criminal prosecutions. Litigants must identify which court system holds jurisdiction before filing, because a wrong venue can waste time and money. Attorneys who practice in one court system may need separate admission to appear before courts in the other.

The federal court system has three main levels and a few specialized branches off to the side. At the base sit the district courts. Above them are the courts of appeals. At the top is the Supreme Court. Congress built this structure under Article III and has reshaped it many times since 1789. The whole apparatus runs on statutes you can read, mostly in Title 28 of the United States Code.

Ninety-four district courts do the trial work. Every state has at least one, and larger states have as many as four. These are the courts where federal trials happen, where juries hear evidence, and where a single judge presides. The district courts carry a heavy civil docket. For the twelve months ending March 31, 2025, civil case filings reached 271,802, down 22 percent as the multidistrict earplug litigation wound down, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025. Combined civil cases and criminal defendants came to 345,446 over the same period.

Each district court has a bankruptcy unit. Ninety bankruptcy courts, staffed by their own judges, handle petitions under the federal code. Bankruptcy is exclusively federal; no state court can discharge debts under Chapter 7 or confirm a Chapter 13 plan. Filings ran high in the same period, with 529,080 bankruptcy petitions, up 13 percent, and 86 of the 90 bankruptcy courts reporting more cases than the year before. This part of the federal court system touches more ordinary families than any other, because it is where medical debt and business failure get sorted out.

Federal question jurisdiction is the first doorway into that trial system. Under 28 U.S.C. 1331, the district courts hear civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. A civil rights claim, a federal employment claim, a patent suit, a securities case: each raises a federal question and belongs on the federal side on that basis. The claim itself has to come from federal law. It is not enough that a federal issue lurks somewhere in the background.

Diversity jurisdiction is the second doorway. Under 28 U.S.C. 1332, the district courts hear disputes between citizens of different states when the amount in controversy exceeds seventy-five thousand dollars. The idea was to give an out-of-state party a neutral forum, away from a local court that might favor its neighbor. Diversity cases apply state substantive law, following Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, but they run on federal procedure. This doorway lets many ordinary contract and injury disputes enter the federal court system even though no federal statute is involved.

A federal case follows a set path. It begins with a complaint filed in a district court, moves through discovery and motions, and reaches trial or settlement. The losing side may appeal to the regional circuit, which reviews the record for legal error rather than reweighing the evidence. Only after that does the Supreme Court become an option, and only if it agrees to hear the matter. Magistrate judges handle much of the pretrial work in the district courts, which keeps the docket moving despite steady caseloads. Most cases end long before any appeal.

Above the district courts sit thirteen courts of appeals. Twelve are regional. Eleven numbered circuits cover groups of states, and the District of Columbia Circuit covers the capital and much federal agency work. These twelve regional courts took in 40,612 filings in the year ending March 31, 2025, up 3 percent, a total that included 21,821 civil appeals, 10,092 criminal appeals, and 5,005 administrative agency appeals, the same Administrative Office report states. A party who loses at trial has a right to one appeal here. Panels of three judges decide most cases, and the full court sits en banc in the rare important one that the judges vote to rehear.

The thirteenth court is the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It hears appeals by subject rather than by geography: patent cases from every district, claims against the United States, veterans' benefits, and international trade. It recorded 1,459 filings in the same period. This court shows how the federal side sometimes sorts cases by topic when uniform national rules matter more than local ones.

Specialized forums round out the picture. The Court of International Trade, the Court of Federal Claims, the Tax Court, and the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims each handle a defined slice of federal litigation. Bankruptcy appellate panels, or BAPs, hear appeals from bankruptcy courts in five circuits, the First, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth; they logged 329 filings in the reporting year. These bodies keep technical dockets before judges who work the same subject every day.

The Supreme Court sits at the top. Nine justices, one seat in Washington, D.C., a court established in 1789. Its review is discretionary. Under 28 U.S.C. 1254, a party asks the Court to grant a writ of certiorari, and the justices choose the few cases they will hear from the thousands that petition each term. The power to strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution traces to Marbury v. Madison. When the Supreme Court rules on federal law, every court in the country, federal and state, must follow it. That is the one point where the whole court system meets a single final authority.

State cases can reach the Supreme Court too, but only on a federal question. When a state high court decides a matter of federal law, the losing party may petition for certiorari, and the justices can take the case. They cannot touch the parts that rest on state law alone. This narrow bridge is the only regular path from a state court up into the federal side, and the Court uses it sparingly. On every other question of purely state law, the last word belongs to a state's own high court, and that is where the state court system takes over.

The federal court system begins with district courts, where trials and evidentiary hearings occur. Within the federal court system, ninety four district courts handle civil and criminal matters. The appellate tier of the court system reviews district decisions for legal error, not new facts. Thirteen circuit courts in this court system bind the districts located within their geographic reach. The Supreme Court sits atop the federal court system and resolves conflicts among the circuits.

Every state runs its own court system, and no two are laid out exactly alike. Still, the same three-tier shape from the federal side repeats here. Trial courts sit at the bottom, one or two appellate levels sit in the middle, and a high court sits at the top. The differences show up in the names, the number of layers, and the way each state divides work among its courts. Learn one state's setup well and the next one is easier to read.

State courts handle the overwhelming share of litigation in the country. A person is far more likely to appear in state court than in a federal one, whether for a traffic case, a landlord dispute, a divorce, or a criminal charge under state law. Because the states hold general power over daily conduct, their courts touch education, zoning, employment, family, and inheritance. The federal side, by contrast, sees a narrower set of cases even in a busy year. Scale is one more reason to know your own state's courts first.

Trial courts of general jurisdiction do the main work. These courts can hear almost any civil or criminal case that state law allows. In New York the general trial court carries the confusing name Supreme Court, even though it is the entry level, not the top. In California it is the Superior Court. Other states use Circuit Court, District Court, or Court of Common Pleas. The label changes, but the job holds steady across every state court system: try felonies, decide large civil suits, and preside over jury trials.

Below the general trial courts sits a limited-jurisdiction layer. These courts handle specific, often smaller matters, and they keep the busy general courts from drowning. Small claims courts hear money disputes under a set dollar cap, often without lawyers, with simple forms and short hearings. Municipal and city courts handle traffic tickets and local ordinance cases, plus the smallest misdemeanors. This layer is where most people actually meet the court system, because a parking dispute or a five-hundred-dollar debt never reaches the higher courts.

Family and probate courts sit in the same specialized tier in many states. Family courts handle divorce, custody, child support, and protective orders. Probate courts handle wills, estates, guardianships, and the affairs of people who cannot manage their own. Some states fold these into the general trial court as divisions; others run them as separate courts with their own judges. Either way, the work is the same, and the state assigns it to judges who see these matters daily.

Specialized dockets have spread through state trial courts. Many states now run drug courts and veterans courts, along with mental health dockets that handle certain defendants with treatment plans instead of ordinary sentencing. A growing number operate business or commercial courts that take complex company disputes and assign them to judges who know corporate law. These specialized parts of a state court system are not separate levels; they are divisions inside the trial courts, built to handle a defined kind of case. The structure stays flexible because each state can add or drop these dockets on its own.

Intermediate appellate courts sit above the trial courts in most, but not all, states. Smaller states skip this level and send appeals straight to the high court. Where the intermediate court exists, it hears the first appeal from a trial judgment, reviewing the record for legal error much as a federal circuit does. Names vary again: Court of Appeal in California, Appellate Division in New York, Superior Court in Pennsylvania. A litigant who loses at trial usually has a right to one review at this level.

At the top of each state sits a court of last resort. Most states call it the Supreme Court. Texas and Oklahoma split the top into two, a Supreme Court for civil cases and a Court of Criminal Appeals for criminal ones. New York calls its high court the Court of Appeals, which trips up newcomers who expect the word Supreme. Like the U.S. Supreme Court, these high courts mostly choose their cases through discretionary review, taking the ones that raise important or unsettled questions of state law.

The state high court has the final word on its own law. When it reads its state constitution or a state statute, no federal court can overrule that reading. This is the flip side of federal supremacy. The two court systems each keep a domain where their judgment is final. A state can even grant more protection under its own constitution than the federal minimum requires, and several state high courts have read their constitutions that way on privacy and search questions.

Judge selection separates the states as much as the court names do. Federal judges are appointed for life. State judges reach the bench many ways: some are elected in partisan or nonpartisan races, some are appointed by the governor, and many sit through a mix of appointment and later retention elections. Terms are fixed, not lifetime. So the people running a state's courts often answer to voters in a way federal judges never do, which shapes how those courts behave and how quickly they move.

Court records and local rules also differ from state to state. Each state publishes its own rules of civil and criminal procedure, its own filing forms, and its own local practices for each county. The National Center for State Courts, through its Court Statistics Project, tracks how these systems are organized and how they compare across the country. For anyone trying to place a case, the practical task is to match the dispute to the right court within the right state, then confirm the deadline and the filing rules for that specific court before anything gets filed.

Each state court system begins with trial courts that hear evidence and resolve factual disputes. The state court system typically routes appeals to intermediate courts before any final review. Names within a court system vary widely, so a supreme court may not be the highest tribunal. New York labels its trial court a supreme court, confusing newcomers to that court system. A state court system usually ends with a high court whose rulings bind all lower courts.

Placing a case begins with a choice between two doors. Federal question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1331 opens the federal court system to claims that arise under the Constitution, a treaty, or an act of Congress. Diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1332 opens that same door when the parties are citizens of different states and the amount in controversy exceeds 75,000 dollars. Most disputes fall outside both. A car wreck, a broken lease, a will contest, a divorce, these land in a state court system, which decides the great majority of legal matters in this country. The first practical question is plain. Does a federal hook exist, or does the case belong at home in the state where the events happened?

Jurisdiction over the subject is one hurdle. Reaching the defendant is another. Personal jurisdiction asks whether the court has power over the person or company being sued, which usually turns on that party's contacts with the forum state. Venue narrows the choice further, pointing to the specific district or county where a case may properly sit. A plaintiff who files in the wrong venue risks transfer or dismissal, even when the court could otherwise hear the claim. These questions get decided early, often on the first motions, and they shape everything that follows. A careful lawyer maps them before the complaint is drafted, not after the fee is spent.

Once the forum is set, the paperwork starts a clock. The plaintiff files a complaint, pays the filing fee, and the clerk issues a summons. Service of process then delivers the summons and complaint to the defendant under rules that vary from place to place. In the federal court system, Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governs who may serve, by what method, and inside what window. A state sets its own service rules, often by statute and by local rule, and those rules can differ from county to county. Miss the service deadline and the case can be dismissed before a judge reads a line of the merits. The defendant then answers, raises defenses, and sometimes files counterclaims of its own. Discovery follows, with documents, written questions, depositions, and requests to admit.

A defendant sued in state court does not always have to stay there. Removal under 28 U.S.C. 1441 lets a qualifying defendant move a case from state court into the federal district court that covers the same ground. The notice of removal carries a tight deadline, usually thirty days after service of the initial pleading. If the federal judge decides the case never belonged in federal court, the judge remands it to the state court it came from. This traffic between the two runs one way for removal and the other way for remand. It is one of the busiest points where the two systems touch, and getting the timing wrong can strand a party in a forum it never wanted.

Between the answer and the trial, motions do much of the work. A motion to dismiss tests whether the complaint states a claim at all. A motion for summary judgment asks the judge to rule without a trial when the material facts are not genuinely disputed. Mediation and settlement conferences run alongside, and many courts require them before a trial date is set. Deadlines govern each step, set by a scheduling order the judge enters early. In the federal system these orders follow Rule 16, and a state uses its own case-management rules. Blow a deadline and you may lose a defense, a witness, or the case itself.

Most cases never reach trial. They settle, or a judge resolves them on a dispositive motion. The ones that go the distance follow a familiar shape on either side. A jury is selected, or the parties agree to a bench trial before the judge alone. Opening statements frame the dispute for the finder of fact. Witnesses testify under oath, exhibits go into evidence, and each side tests the other's proof on cross-examination. Closing arguments come last, then the judge instructs the jury on the law, then a verdict lands. A trial in the federal system and a trial in a state court rhyme in structure, though evidence rules and jury sizes differ, along with the vote a verdict requires. The judge enters judgment on the verdict, and the losing side weighs whether to appeal.

Each side has its own ladder. In the federal court system, a party who loses in a district court appeals to the regional court of appeals for its circuit, and from there may ask the Supreme Court to hear the matter. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported 40,612 filings in the twelve regional courts of appeals for the twelve months ending March 31, 2025, a rise of 3 percent, with 21,821 civil appeals, 10,092 criminal appeals, and 5,005 administrative agency appeals. The Federal Circuit took another 1,459 filings. Bankruptcy runs its own track, with 529,080 petitions filed over the same period and five circuits operating bankruptcy appellate panels. A state usually has its own intermediate appellate court and a court of last resort, though the labels change from one state to the next. Some smaller states send appeals straight to their high court.

The two systems are not sealed off from one another. When a state high court decides a question of federal law, the losing party can petition the United States Supreme Court for certiorari under 28 U.S.C. 1254 and its companion provisions. The Court agrees to hear only a small slice of the petitions it receives each term. Habeas corpus is the other main bridge. A state prisoner who has exhausted every remedy in the state court system can ask a federal district court to decide whether the conviction violated the Constitution. Both routes are narrow. Both demand exact compliance with deadlines and procedural rules, and a missed step in state court can shut the federal door for good. Knowing which bridge applies, and when, is part of choosing the right forum at the start.

A civil case enters the court system when a plaintiff files a complaint in a proper venue. Both federal and state branches of the court system permit appeals from a final trial judgment. Selecting the right court system depends on subject matter jurisdiction and the parties involved. Skilled counsel guides a client through the court system from initial pleadings to a final decision.

The two parallel systems described at the start of this guide meet every reader with the same practical problem. You know your dispute. You need the one court that can hear it, in the right place, before the deadline runs. This directory organizes courts along the same lines the court system itself follows, by state and by federal district, so you can start from where you live or where the events happened and work toward the correct courthouse. Each state gets its own set of pages. The federal court system gets its own, sorted by circuit and district, so a business dispute in one district and a criminal matter in another do not blur together.

Every per-court guide covers a short list of facts you actually need. It names the court, places it within the state or federal court system, and explains what kinds of cases the court hears. It points to the clerk's office, the filing rules, and the local procedures that trip up attorneys from out of state. Where a court publishes its own forms or standing orders, the guide links directly to them. The point is to shorten the distance between a question and the correct filing window, because in either system a late filing can end a case before anyone argues the facts. A guide will not practice law for you. It gets you to the door with the deadline in hand.

Geography usually decides which pages you need. A dispute over land sits where the land is. A contract fight often sits where the contract was performed or where the defendant does business. A federal district covers a fixed set of counties, and each state draws its own trial-court boundaries. Start from the map. The directory's state pages and federal district pages track those boundaries, so you can move from a county to the trial court that covers it, then up to the appellate court that sits above it.

Some matters ride special tracks that a general search will miss. Bankruptcy runs through its own federal courts, with its own judges and its own petition process. Immigration matters move through administrative courts that sit outside the ordinary court structure entirely. Probate, family, and small claims often have dedicated divisions inside a state system, each with its own forms and its own dollar limits. A per-court guide flags these divisions so you do not file a wage claim in a court built for felonies. When the right forum is a specialized one, the guide points you there and names the rules that apply.

Finding the court is half the job. The other half is counsel admitted to practice in it. Admission is not uniform across the court system. A lawyer licensed by a state bar may appear in that state's trial and appellate courts, but appearing in a federal district court usually requires a separate admission to that court's bar. Some federal courts admit attorneys who already belong to the state bar where the court sits. Others set their own requirements and their own fees. A lawyer who handles your matter in state court may need to associate local counsel, or seek a pro hac vice order, to appear in the neighboring federal court system. Ask about admission early, before you retain anyone.

This is where verification earns its keep. This directory runs dated, editor-reviewed checks on firms that submit evidence and shows the result of each published check. A check appears with a name, a plain-language description, a status, and the date an editor last reviewed it. Bar standing is one such check. It confirms that a lawyer holds an active license and stands in good standing with the relevant state bar. Court admissions is another. It records the specific courts where a firm's attorneys are admitted, which matters when your case sits in one particular district and not the district next door. A stale claim helps no one, so each result carries its own last-checked date.

Verification sets a floor. It does not judge quality. A passing bar-standing check tells you a lawyer can practice today. It does not tell you the lawyer is the right fit for a securities trial or a custody fight. Use the checks to screen out the clearly unqualified, then interview the ones who remain. Ask how many times they have appeared in the specific court that will hear your case. Ask who signs the filings. The record of admissions gives you a concrete place to start that conversation.

Ordering deserves a word, because listings have to appear in some sequence. Where plan tier affects the order in which firms show up, this directory says so plainly, and the verification status of a firm is kept separate from what that firm pays. A paid placement does not change whether a bar-standing check passed or when an editor last looked at it. Two systems run side by side across this country, one federal and fifty state, and the right lawyer for you is the one admitted where your case will actually be heard. Start with the court. Confirm the admissions. Read the dates. Then make the call with the facts in front of you.