Skip to main content

How does one describe the U.S. court system? What are the types of courts? How does the federal court system compare with the state court system?...

Under the US Constitution, the highest court is the Supreme Court. The role of the Supreme Court is to hear the following: lawsuits between two or more states, cases concerning "ambassadors and other public ministers," cases of appeal, and any cases questioning a point of "constitutional and/or federal law" (United States Courts, "About the Supreme Court"). The Constitution grants Congress the power to oversee the Supreme Court, and over the years, the number of seats on the court has changed. The Judiciary Act of 1837 established the nine seats held today, including the chief justice and eight associate justices (Federal Judicial Center, "The Supreme Court of the United States and the Federal Judiciary").



The 13 U.S. Courts of Appeal count as the second type of U.S. courts. If a defendant does not think the decision handed by a district court was correctly guided by the law, the defendant has the right to appeal to the appellate court of the defendant's district. The role of the appellate courts is to decide "whether or not the law was applied correctly in the trial court" (United States Courts, "Court Role and Structure").

The third type of court is the district court, also called the trial court. Each state has "at least one district court," and there are a total of 94 U.S. District Courts across the nation ("Court Role and Structure"). Nearly all criminal and civil cases are heard by the district courts before being appealed to higher courts, should a case be appealed. In district courts, judges have the right oversee jury trials and sometimes to try cases without a jury. District court judges decide on the following "questions of law":



... the admissibility of certain kinds of evidence, the scope of a search warrant, or the legality of an arrest. (Georgia Tech, "Federal District Courts")



District courts will decide if, beyond reasonable doubt, a defendant committed a crime.

The primary difference between federal district courts and state district courts concerns the types of cases the courts can hear. State courts can hear almost any case concerning state laws and state citizens. Cases include "robberies, traffic violations, broken contracts, and family disputes" ("Federal vs. State Courts--Key Differences"). The only kinds of cases state district courts cannot hear concern federal crimes, "antitrust, bankruptcy, patent, copyright, and some maritime cases," which are all instead heard by federal district courts, in addition to any cases concerning the United States ("Federal vs. State Courts").

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more