Probably Remember are things the American court system is hierarchical which means any

discussion of it cries out for a visual representation thought bubble like Drake will start from the
bottom the trial courts have original jurisdiction when you realize that there are 50 states each
with its own court system it shouldn't be surprised that the vast majority of cases start out of
course most cases never get to court at all the vast majority of disputes criminal and civil are
settled outside of court how's that for efficiency on the federal side the trial courts are EU S
district courts are 94 of AM with 663 judges more or less sometimes in civil cases a plaintiff the
person bringing the case will have a choice about whether to bring that case in state or federal
court only started the district courts if your case meets certain important criteria almost all
criminal cases start in state courts so if you don't like the result in the trial court and you have a
reasonable claim that there was something procedurally wrong with the case or the way the law
was applied you can bring an appeal notice that if you start in state courts usually have more
chances for appeal because most states have two levels of appellate courts in the federal system
has one appeals court you're done one thing to remember the loser can always try to appeal even
if that loser was the state that failed in its prosecution federal appeals courts are called circuit
courts and there are twelve of them distributed regionally throughout EU S you might guess at
the region where your case heard matters and you'd be right judges in the Ninth Circuit which
includes California and Oregon tend to be more liberal that judges in the 5th circuit federal
appeals are usually heard by panels of three and in all cases they must be brought in a District
Court they are cases where the law issue is a federal law like a claim against Obama care cases
involving treaties which are by definition federal laws these are pretty rare and really interesting
cases involving the US constitution for example the case concerning freedom of religion and
cases where the US government is a party to the litigation the other type of case that can go in a
federal court is one involving more than one state where the makes sense because if the parties in
dispute are in different states they might not even agree where to have the trial and federal judges
are supposed to be more impartial than state judges thanks thought bubble so thoughtful so
bubbly if you read the news and pay attention to legal cases most of what you see are lower court
decisions at least until the spring when the Supreme Court starts handing down decisions these
are the ones that tend to make it into the history books and that you may hav well I won't answer
that for you at the time the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction in fact it's the final Court of
Appeals if you lose there you really lost when the court hears a case it's called judicial review
there are however circumstances when the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction and can act
like a trial court so it's a good thing that most of the justices are in fact lawyers although there's
no constitutional requirement that they need to be click word as original jurisdiction in cases
between the us cases between two or more states cases involving foreign ministers or
ambassadors in cases brought by citizens of one state against citizens of another state or against a
foreign country what do these cases have in common the main thing is that you can imagine
there being a single state where they could happen this is especially true in cases involving
foreign officials and their my favorite Supreme Court cases crimes committed on the high seas
that's right the Supreme Court can exercise original this is not as weird as it sounds because
crimes on the high seas by definition have not happened in any state so where are you going to
have the trial but most of the time cases that make the Supreme Court are there on appeal in
order for the court to exercise its appellate jurisdiction in the case must raise a federal question
for example one involving due process or equal protection or an important federal statute I don't
know what those terms mean don't worry we'll get to them here's the thing though doesn't hear a
lot of cases it doesn't want to and I don't want to either I understand they also can't and it's not
just because most of the justices are kind of old it's because they're only nine of them and they
get request a review about 8000 cases a year out of these they actually hand down about 80
decisions so they have decision rules to weed out the cases that they don't want to hear the first
one is laws unconstitutional for it has gone into effect there has to be an actual injury first
another way of saying this is that the Supreme Court will not issue advisory opinions speculating
on whether or not a law might violate the constitution the second hurdle potential Supreme Court
litigant has to get over is called standing that sounds terrible I wouldn't want to be standing no
this means that in order to bring a case the parties must have a substantial stake in the outcome
which usually means an actual injury lack of standing is one reason that the court has refused
cases about same sex marriage brought by opposite sex married people the court will also refuse
to hear a case that is moot move Ness which is a real word I promise I'm reading it on a
teleprompter means that the Case No longer requires a resolution say because one of the parties
is dead the flip side of mootness is ripeness if a potential injury has yet to occur the case is not
ripe it's like a hard avocado your guacamole it's best not to be too anxious about bringing your
case most of the time you can wait except in cases like Bush V gore where we kind of needed an
outcome so a new president could move into the White House there's also a vague decision rule
called the political question doctrine in some cases the court would rather that the executive or
legislative branch handle the issue and not get involved there are certain cases that the court will
almost always take even though all things being equal they'd when the circuit courts have
reached different or conflicting conclusions on the same issue what's known as a circuit split the
corporal usually hear the case to resolve the confusion the court will also almost always hear a
case where the federal government itself initiated the appeal finally the Supreme Court will
usually take a case that has a clear constitutional question like one involving freedom of speech
or religion although there are sometimes constitutional issues that they feel are se or they just
don't want to do this for a long time for example the court didn't hear gun control cases and now
it is they don't usually take obscenity cases OK so that's the structure of the court system and
how case does or usually doesn't make it to the Supreme Court but we haven't really discussed is
what happens when it case does make it to the Supreme Court will show you that next time when
we take a shortcut to the Supreme Court by suing the ambassador to Switzerland for making such
delict it's making me unhealthy