Name: Structure of the Court System: Crash Course Government and Politics #19
Uploaded: 2017-10-22T03:42:34.000Z
Duration: 6 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, I'm Craig and this is Crash Course Government
and Politics. As fans of our series know,

here at Crash Course we believe in hierarchy.
First at the top you got me, then there's

John Green, then Stan, then Brandon, then
Zulaiha, then a bunch of independent contractors

- wait I'm an independent contractor. But
I'm still at the top! Anyway then the rest

of it's turtles all the way down. 'Cept at
the bottom. There's an eagle.

Anyway, it's the strict adherence to hierarchy
that makes CC HQ run like a well-oiled machine.

The same can be said for the U.S. court system.

As you probably remember, because you're a
smart rememberer of things, the American court

system is hierarchical which means any discussion of it
cries out for a visual representation. Thought Bubble!

Like Drake, we'll start from the bottom. The
trial courts have original jurisdiction. When

you realize there are 50 states, each with
its own court system, it shouldn't be a surprise

that the vast majority of cases start out
in state courts. 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
the U.S. district courts. There are 94 of

them with 663 judges, more or less. Sometimes
in civil cases, a plaintiff, the person bringing

the case, will have a choice of whether to
bring that case in state or federal court.

But you can only start in 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 a 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,
you usually have more chances for appeal because

most states have two levels of appellate courts,
and the federal system has one. Appeals courts

can refuse to hear appeals, and if they do,
you're done. One thing to remember: the loser

can always try to appeal, even if that loser
was of the state that failed in its prosecution.

Federal appeals courts are called circuit
courts, and there are 12 of them distributed

regionally throughout the U.S.. You might
guess if the region where your case is heard

matters, and you'd be right! Judges in the
9th circuit, which includes California and

Oregon, tend to be more liberal than judges
in the 5th circuit.

Federal appeals are usually heard by panels
of three judges while trials in the district

court are before a single judge. There are
four scenarios where the federal courts have

original jurisdiction, and in all cases they
must be brought in a district court.

They are:
Cases where the law at issue is a federal

law like a claim against Obamacare.
Cases involving treaties which are by definition

federal laws. These are pretty rare and rarely
interesting.

Cases involving the U.S. Constitution. For
example a case concerning freedom of religion.

And cases where the U.S. 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 there's more than 70,000 dollars at
issue. This make 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 have even heard of. But how does a
case get to the supreme court, Craig?

Well, I will answer that for you. That's my job.

Most of the time, the supreme court has appellate
jurisdiction. In fact, it's the final court

of appeals. If you lose there, you really
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.

The court has original jurisdiction in cases
between the U.S. and a state, cases between

two or more states, cases involving foreign
ministers or ambassadors, and 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't imagine there being

a single state where they could happen. This
is especially true in cases involving foreign officials.

And then there are my favorite supreme court
cases - crimes committed on the high seas.

That's right -- the supreme court can exercise
original jurisdiction over pirates! 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 gonna have
the trial?

But most of the time, cases that make it to
the supreme court are there on appeal. In

order for the court to exercise its appellate
jurisdiction, the case must raise a federal question.

For example one involving due process
or equal protection, or an important federal statute.

Statute! If you don't know what those
terms mean, don't worry. We'll get to them.

Here's the thing though: the supreme court
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 there are only nine of them, and they

get requests to review about 8,000 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 there has to be

a case or controversy, which means that you
can't request the court to review whether

or not a law is unconstitutional before 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

in whether or not a law might violate the
constitution.

The second hurdle a potential supreme court
litigant has to get over is called standing.

Huh! 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 cases that
is moot. Mootness, 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
flipside 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...just not going to be very good.

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 a new 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 let the executive or legislative
branch handle the issue and not get involved.

There are certain cases that the court would
almost always take, even though all things

being equal, they'd rather not. When the circuit
courts have reached different or conflicting

conclusions on the same issue, what's known
as a circuit split, the court will 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 settled, or they
just don't want to deal with.

For a long time, for example, the court
didn't hear gun control cases,

and nowadays they don't usually take obscenity cases.