San Francisco is the headquarters for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from district courts in Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as California.

You can see the dates and cases that the court is going to hear oral arguments about on the 9th Circuit's calendar. A brief note on that page: it's not very well organized. The calendar is sorted bizarrely first by month, then by year. The hyperlinks are the month & year (e.g.: "November 07" leads to a schedule of cases being heard in San Francisco in November 2007) with the non-hyperlinked parts being the days of the month that the court is sitting.

The court usually hears oral arguments in panels of three. However, they occasionally will re-hear a case en banc, with a panel of 15 judges.

The San Francisco courthouse in which the Ninth circuit sits is quite impressive, and worth a visit even if the Court of Appeals isn't sitting. It is located at 95 Seventh Street .

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is a former judge in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.