Authority of opposite decision on international law of other U.S. court of appeals in state court in instant circuit court

Question

Say the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decides that the provision of a self-executing, ratified-by-the-U.S. international treaty which provides for an individual right does not provide such individual right. However, the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit decides (at a later time) that the treaty does indeed provide for an individual right in the U.S..

Is there, preferably a U.S. Supreme Court decision, or any other case law that decided that the newer circuit court decision relating to federal (or more narrowly relating to international law) should enjoy a rebuttable presumption to be correct over the older one or any case that decided that the circuit court with geographic jurisdiction should enjoy such a presumption regardless of its precedence or antecedence? Or else, is there anything similar that at least decided this question for the geographic jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, that is, is there such a precedent that declares it’s own authority in federal (or more narrowly) international law matters over the decisions of the U.S. court of appeals for any other circuit?

I understand that such out-of-circuit cases may be cited without a problem, and they will definitely have persuasive authority (unlike, for e.g. generally unpublished decisions), but the question is whether geographic or the temporal instancy in opposing decisions makes one over the other binding authority.

Answer 1

The decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit are binding precedents on the lower federal courts of the 9th Circuit.

The decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit are binding precedents on the lower federal courts of the 7th Circuit.

These decisions are not binding precedents, even as to federal law, on state courts, or in any other circuits, although they are persuasive authority in all jurisdictions that don't have a contrary binding precedent.

When two circuits reach contrary legal conclusions in binding precedents, this is called a circuit split. Sometimes, circuit splits are resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court (a large share of its docket is devoted to such cases). Sometimes Congress wakes up and enacts a law that resolves the dispute if it involves a non-constitutional issue.

Sometimes (arguably, most of the time), circuit splits go unresolved for years or even decades, and the meaning of a federal law or a treaty in one part of the United States is different from the meaning of a federal law or a treaty in another part of the United States.

In some other circuit where the legal issue that is the subject of the circuit split is question of first impression with no binding case law decided in that circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, for example, the parties will offer up persuasive authority from the 7th and 9th Circuits that have previously issued binding precedents on the issue and will try to argue that the one that favors them is correct, or that there is a third way to consider the issue that also favors them.

Indeed, often the U.S. Supreme Court deliberately refrains from resolving circuit splits until a clear majority has emerged favoring one view or the other.

Even simply counting how many circuit splits exist is a surprisingly tricky matter. For example, one database estimates that 29%-41% of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in recent years resolved circuit splits (at the same link) but that was realistically an underestimate.

the question is whether geographic or the temporal instancy in opposing decisions makes one over the other binding authority.

There is not. There is no procedural rule that resolves a circuit split.