The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (in case citations, 10th Cir.)

It is one of thirteen United States courts of appeals and has jurisdiction over 560,625 square miles,[1] or roughly one seventh of the country's land mass.

Congress created a new judicial circuit in 1929 to accommodate the increased caseload in the federal courts.

The original plan had sprung from an American Bar Association committee in 1925 and would have changed the composition of all but two circuits.

A bill by Representative Walter Newton would separate the circuit's eastern and western states.

[2] In 1929, Congress passed a law that placed the federal U.S. district courts in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas in the Eighth Circuit and created a Tenth Circuit that included Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma.