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  • Hey everybody! What an exciting week we have ahead of us, and that is our discussion

  • about the federal court system. There's a couple of points I want to make before

  • we begin talking about the system more specifically. The first point is this:

  • we are going to be using a lot of terms you probably have never heard before, so

  • don't be stressed about that. Don't be freaked out about it. Just understand

  • that there's gonna be a lot of new terms, so this is what I call a "term heavy"

  • discussion, and I will repeat those terms, and I will do my best to explain them, and

  • I'll do my job as best I can. So that's point number one. Point number two is

  • that we're going to be talking about the federal court system. Each state,

  • including California, has a separate court system, and most of the

  • interactions that we have are with state court systems, not the federal court

  • system. So for example, most of the time if you get called up to serve on a jury,

  • it'll be at a state court. Most of the time any legal action that takes place, any

  • type of criminal trials that take place, usually the

  • vast majority of those take place at the state level. So going back to one of our

  • earlier discussions -- this one about federalism: if you remember, there are

  • powers called "concurrent powers," and those are powers that both the federal

  • government and the states have

  • at the same time. Well the power to create a court system is one of those

  • concurrent powers, so there's a federal court system and then separate and

  • concurrently, each state, including California, has its own court system

  • ok? So the federal court system is what we call a three tier system or three

  • level system. At the bottom level... there are federal district courts,

  • and then the next level up...there are circuit courts

  • also known as federal courts of appeals, and you'll hear me use those words those

  • terms interchangeably, so understand that they mean the same thing.

  • Circuit courts and federal courts of appeals mean the same thing. That's the

  • second level or the second tier of the federal court system, and then at the top

  • is the United States Supreme Court; there's only one of those! So the next

  • video is going to be dealing exclusively with federal district courts.

Hey everybody! What an exciting week we have ahead of us, and that is our discussion

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