United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

The Ninth Circuit hears appeals from U.S. district courts located in Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, the Montana, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, and Washington state. The Court Web site includes contact information, forms, fees, rules & orders, etc. For questions, call the court at (415) 355-8000.

Published Ninth Circuit practice guides include Federal Ninth Circuit Civil Appellate Practice (The Rutter Group) and Federal Appellate Practice 9th Circuit. The Court posts a series of helpful Guides and Legal Outlines including “Perfecting Your Appeal,” “Appellate Jurisdiction in the Ninth Circuit” and “Section 1983 Outline.”

Opinions:The Court posts both published opinions (1995-present) andmemorandum/unpublished opinions (2002-present). You can search published opinion on Google Scholar (1920s-present).

The Court posts an archive of Web Sites Cited in Ninth Circuit Opinions from 2008 to the present.

Audio Recordings and Transcripts: The court also posts audio recordings of oral arguments starting September 2007 (with a few earlier cases). Unofficial transcripts of selected oral arguments are available on Westlaw (CTA9-ORALARG).

Docket Sheets and Case Files: Docket sheets are available online through PACER and various commercial databases (see “Docket Sheets” in this legal Encyclopedia). Documents filed in Ninth Circuit cases are also available through these services starting in September 2008, becoming nearly comprehensive as of January 2, 2009.

The original filed documents are kept at the Court for about five years and then archived at the National Archives and Records Administration Regional Archives at San Francisco which is actually in San Bruno, California. You can contact the Ninth Circuit Case Files office (415-355-7810) to obtain the transfer, box, and location numbers at the Archives. You can then hire a document retrieval service or contact the Archives (650-238-3501) to get copies.

Ninth Circuit briefs are available on Westlaw from around 1993 to the present. You can order copies of briefs going even farther back from the document delivery services at the Los Angeles County Law Library and the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington.

In addition, briefs and other case file documents were compiled in volumes called, Records and Briefs of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. These volumes have been digitized and posted on the Internet Archive from volume 2 (1891) to at least volume 3095 (1959).

See Also

Case Pulls
Docket Sheets
Federal Court Rules
Judges
Jury Instructions
United States Court of Appeals
Unreported Decisions