9th Cir. Makes Rare Visit to Pacific Territory

A courthouse on the island of Saipan in the Pacific Ocean, about 6,000 miles from San Francisco, hosted the US’ largest federal appeals court for a special oral argument sitting Wednesday, the first time the court has held arguments in the Pacific territories in over two decades, Isaiah Poritz reports.

Saipan, only 44 square miles, is the capital of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an unincorporated US territory formed in 1978. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers around 67 million people across nine states in the American West, has legal jurisdiction over the ...