 Circuit courts do not collaborate or work with other circuits to resolve legal issues , and different circuit courts may reach conflicting conclusions about the same legal issue . Furthermore , cases decided in one circuit are not binding authority on other circuits . If the Supreme Court of the United States has not ruled on a legal issue , federal courts of appeals resolve these issues " as they see fit , subject only to a norm of intracircuit stare decisis . " When a circuit split occurs , there is rarely an even numeric division among courts of appeals with regard to how the dispute should be resolved . In fact , one study found that courts of appeals split evenly in less than one third of all circuit splits . Occasionally , separate courts of appeals will reach three or more different conclusions with regard to the same legal issue . 
