Constitution Article III, Section 2 , the Supreme Court has "original jurisdiction" over several small but important categories of cases. That means, quite literally, that the parties can bring such disputes directly to the Supreme Court.
However, the Supreme Court still has the discretion regarding whether or it will hear these cases. The original jurisdiction of the Court is laid out by statute in 28 U. Section a provides that with one type of dispute disputes between states , the Court's jurisdiction is not only "original," it is exclusive. In other words, if the parties cannot settle the matter, no other court but the Supreme Court has authority, under the Constitution, to take jurisdiction.
Rule 17 of the Supreme Court Rules governs actions based on the Court's original jurisdiction. Relatively few original jurisdiction cases come to the Court.
Attorneys, and the U. Attorney is the primary prosecutor for the federal government in his or her respective area. There are over district court judges nationwide.
Some tasks of the district court are given to federal magistrate judges. Magistrates are appointed by the district court by a majority vote of the judges and serve for a term of eight years if full-time and four years if part-time, but they can be reappointed after completion of their term.
In criminal matters, magistrate judges may oversee certain cases, issue search warrants and arrest warrants, conduct initial hearings, set bail, decide certain motions such as a motion to suppress evidence , and other similar actions. In civil cases, magistrates often handle a variety of issues such as pre-trial motions and discovery. Federal trial courts have also been established for a few subject-specific areas.
Each federal district also has a bankruptcy court for those proceedings. Once the federal district court has decided a case, the case can be appealed to a United States court of appeal. There are twelve federal circuits that divide the country into different regions. Cases from the district courts of those states are appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Additionally, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has a nationwide jurisdiction over very specific issues such as patents. Each circuit court has multiple judges, ranging from six on the First Circuit to twenty-nine on the Ninth Circuit.
Circuit court judges are appointed for life by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Appeals to circuit courts are first heard by a panel, consisting of three circuit court judges. En banc opinions tend to carry more weight and are usually decided only after a panel has first heard the case.
Beyond the Federal Circuit, a few courts have been established to deal with appeals on specific subjects such as veterans claims United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and military matters United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the American judicial system, and has the power to decide appeals on all cases brought in federal court or those brought in state court but dealing with federal law.
For example, if a First Amendment freedom of speech case was decided by the highest court of a state usually the state supreme court , the case could be appealed to the federal Supreme Court. Diversity Jurisdiction of a federal court arises if:. For purposes of diversity jurisdiction, a corporation is a citizen of both the state of incorporation and the state of its principal place of business. Venue and Standing. Jurisdiction deals with whether a court has the authority to hear a case involving specific persons or property and subject matter.
Two other concepts of importance are venue and standing. Merely because a court may have jurisdiction dos not mean it has venue. Venue: within a particular jurisdiction, the most appropriate location for a trial to be held and from which a jury will be selected.
Standing to Sue : an individual or entity must have a sufficient stake in the controversy before they may bring suit. This is a legally protected and tangible interest. Whether standing exists, in turn, will depend in part on whether there is a justiciable controversy- that is, where it is real and substantial, not moot, hypothetical, or academic.
In other words, there must be actual damage, not hypothetical damages yet to occur, no matter how probable they might be. State Court Systems. Basically three tiered. Appellate courts intermediate and supreme typically limit their review to questions of law and procedure, rather than questions of fact, which generally are the domain of the trial court.
US Supreme Court. CIVIL criminal. Texas Court of Appeals. Municipal Courts Justice of Peace Courts. In general, the appeals go up to the Texas Ct.
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