> that one can be summoned to a court outside of their home town Generally it is very hard to do this. The U.S. actually has two levels of court systems: state

> that one can be summoned to a court outside of their home town Generally it is very hard to do this. The U.S. actually has two levels of court systems: state (each state has their own judicial system) and federal (for cases involving federal law, agencies, and so on - IANAL so I don't actually know the full list). This rapidly gets obscenely complicated when you think about the fact that some people live in one state but work in another, about how you might handle an accident on a road trip to Disneyland, or even about how states can tax businesses that operate online, say through Amazon. In many cases you have to file in a region convenient for the defendant to respond. Federal court, even at the lowest levels, is serious stuff. Combine that with - the NSA, - implications for national security, which means everyone with a title and everyone who wants one is going to raise a hullaballoo, from the Department of State to the Department of Defense to the Department of Homeland Security, - countries around the world being pissed, and - the FBI, with explicit directives to capture Snowden, and what you get is a very well-oiled political and bureaucratic machine moving far faster than it normally would. Now, as a disclaimer, I have absolutely no experience with federal cases, but in the state civil cases that I saw when I interned at a small law firm, it was perfectly common for components of the judicial process to take weeks; it takes months and egregious conduct to be found in contempt. I was going to say that I suspected the case went to a specific subject-matter court (yes, if you have a case dealing with a specific topic X, it's possible - highly unlikely but possible - that you may have to deal with a subject-matter court), but after doing some fact-checking (https://www.wired.com/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/ https://www.wired.com/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/), it seems the suit was raised in the Eastern District of Virginia. I'm not sure exactly what it was that gave V.A. E.D. original jurisdiction over such a case, but I'm sure someone better versed in this could provide a better answer.