Dual Court System Essay

The United States has a dual court system. We have a separate judicial system for each of the states and a separate federal system. The federal system is made up of districts courts, circuit courts of appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States. The state system is made up of the trial courts of limited jurisdiction, trial courts of general jurisdiction, intermediate courts of appeal, and appellate courts of last resort or State Supreme Court (Bohm & Haley, 2012).
The lowest court in the federal system is the District Court. These are courts of original jurisdiction. Most federal criminal and civil violations are heard in District Court. The next level in the federal court system is the Circuit Courts of Appeals. A person or group that loses a case in federal district court can appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeal. The decision in the Circuit Court of Appeals is binding unless appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The highest court in the land is the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has jurisdiction over cases involving the Constitution, acts of Congress, and treaties with other nations. The Supreme Court is made up of a Chief Justice and eight associate justices. The decisions

made by the Supreme Court are binding (Bohm & Haley, 2012).
The lowest court in the state system is the Trial Courts of Limited Jurisdiction. Trial Courts of Limited Jurisdiction generally deal with minor cases, such as traffic violation, some misdemeanors, and civil cases involving less than one thousand dollars. The next level in the state system would be Trial Courts of General Jurisdiction. These courts have the authority to try all civil and criminal cases and hear appeals from lower courts. The next level of the state system is the Intermediate Appellate Courts. These courts only hear criminal and civil appeals cases from trial courts of general jurisdiction. The highest court in the state system is the States Court of Last Resort or the State Supreme Court. The State Supreme Court will hear appeals from either trial courts of general jurisdiction or intermediate appellate courts (Bohm & Haley, 2012).
Courts in the United States have ten purposes.

The ten purposes are to do justice, to appear to do justice, to provide a forum where disputes can be resolved justly and peacefully, to censure wrong doing, to remove or restrict the freedom of those who have committed crime, to punish, to rehabilitate, to prevent or deter crime, and to protect citizens against arbitrary government actions (Bohn & Haley, 2012). An article in the Review of General Semantics state that society holds our court system to a higher standard of fairness and decency. The article goes on to state that our court system is similar to an umpire in baseball. The umpire has the burden to apply the rules fairly and make decision without being influenced (Scardilli,

2013).
Bohm, R. M., & Haley, K. N. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
SCARDILLI, F. J. (2013). HOW JUST IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM?. ETC: A Review Of General Semantics, 70(2), 130-134.