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

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,