United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, cited as D.C. Cir., is one of the thirteen federal courts of appeals of the United States. It has the smallest geographical reach of any of them, covering only the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and it sits at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, DC. Congress created it in 1893 as the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, with a chief justice and associate justices on the pattern of the Supreme Court, and in 1948 the chief justiceship was converted into a rotating chief judgeship. Because its jurisdiction includes the capital, it is the principal federal appellate forum for administrative law and constitutional disputes, and it is often described informally as the second highest court in the land although it ranks no higher than the other courts of appeals. Several sitting and former Supreme Court justices began their judicial careers on this court.