Are these types of court the same thing or different things?
I know very little about judicial systems, and I've heard the term "court" (in a legal sense) used to describe 2 things that seem to be very different. I'm not sure if these 2 functions are done by the same organization or not, or if this varies around the world.
One is a criminal type of court, where someone breaks a law, and they go to a court where evidence is presented. A jury of citizens decide whether the person is guilty, and then a judge decides a verdict.
The other usage is a more legal type of court, where there's an ambiguity in a law or something like that. Some people with a dispute go to a court, and then a judge or a group of judges look at all the relevant laws and decide on the most correct interpretation (there's no jury). Depending on where in the world this happens, there may or may not be an expectation that this interpretation is used in similar cases in the future.
My question is, are these types of court the same thing?
In addition, does this vary around the world, and is there anything fundamentally wrong with my understanding of this?
Posted Jan 8, 2022, 4:12 AM UTC
The second type you mention is appellate court.
Both civil and criminal cases can appeal for ambiguity in the law or how the law applies to that specific case.
So in a lot of places in the US you have general district court, which does minor criminal, and sometimes traffic, sometimes traffic has its own separate court. Then you have state level circuit court that handles felonies and major cases, and a state supreme court.
Federally it's similar. There's a US federal district court, circuit court for appeals, and the federal supreme court.
Every now and then cases don't need to start at the lowest level. There's a few kind that can go straight to the supreme court, but usually it has to work through at least one appeal first.
So is there still a jury of citizens when a case gets appealed to another court? (Also, are you talking about just the United States here?)
This is us specific but the us is largely based on British law, so many commonwealth countries have similar systems with relatively minor differences.
Except Louisiana, which is based on Napoleonic law.
You have a right to a jury trial in the US for pretty much anything, but that right is often waived and a judge decides instead.
Laws vary on whether you can get a jury trial for a traffic ticket. If it's a misdemeanor and not a civil violation you often can get a jury trial even for a traffic ticket. There is an appeals process in any case, and in theory you could take your traffic ticket to the supreme court. First the state supreme court and then federal. It has rarely happened that even small tickets make it to state supreme court appeals. In that case a jury likely never have heard the case.
I don't get most of what you're talking about (I only just learned the distinction between civil and criminal cases after looking it up after you mentioned it), but I appreciate the explanation. (Also, the distinction between civil and criminal cases mostly answers my original question, so thank you.)
Well the tldr is the appeals court settles arguments about what a law means, after the first court decides (whether jury or judge, civil or criminal), and that's always a judge or judges, not a jury.
So one way to look at it would be civil, criminal, and appeals as the three main types.