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Federalism and the American court organization389federal law claims are not as numerous as state claims, when issues offederal law arise, they are often very important. Either the federal Constitutionis involved or the case involves a problem of sufficient importance thatCongress has decided to regulate it by way of a federal statute. The importanceof many of the cases that federal judges handle, plus the facts thatthere are relatively few federal judges and they are appointed by the Presidentfor life, all combine to give federal district judges a certain prestige thatdoes not attach to state trial court judges.Different branch of federal courts comprises courts with geographic– based appellate jurisdiction. Eleven of the courts of appeals are designatedby number. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuitincludes Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, and any appeal from one of thenine district courts of those states can be heard by it. The U.S. Court ofAppeals for the District of Columbia – the twelfth court of appeals – mainlyhears appeals from District of Columbia government and various departmentsassigned by Congress. The thirteenth court of appeals is the U.S.Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This court hears appeals from someof the Article III courts and some commissions and agencies. Since U.S.courts of appeals hear only cases on appeal from U.S. districts courts orfederal regulatory agencies, they naturally have the same substantive jurisdiction.In 1996 a total of 51,963 cases were filed in the federal courts ofappeal 29 .The federal courts of appeals are sometimes called “circuit” courts ofappeal because the judges at one point had to “ride circuit”, for example, totravel through the states under their jurisdiction along a regular route,usually on horseback, and hold their court in various places along the route.There is a right to appeal from all final judgments of district courts to thecircuit courts of appeals of the appropriate circuit. In addition, the circuitcourts have jurisdiction to hear appeals from decisions of certain administrativeagencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Departmentof Health and Human Services 30 .The number of appeals court judges consists of 167, with the number ofjudges assigned to individual circuits varying from six for the first circuit totwenty eight for the ninth Circuit. Normally appeals are heard by groups ofthree judges. They are called panels. When an appeal reaches the court,three judges assigned to hear it, and the decision of majority decides thecase. Sometimes, the court of appeals will decide to hear the case en banc,which means that all of the judges assigned to that circuit will hear the case.In a majority of federal cases, the court of appeals is the last stop. For29 W. Burnham, op. cit., p. 6030 R.R. Wheeler, op. cit., p. 22.