Jurisdiction & the Courts

This week we learned about the courts, their operations and the different parties in litigation. Please answer the following questions in your discussion post: 

1. Why is the legal concept of jurisdiction important for the operation of American courts?

2. What is judicial self-restraint?

3. Who are the participants in criminal and civil cases, and what roles do they play in the dispute resolution process?

Discussions for Weeks 1 through 3 will be graded after Week 3.  This grading rubric applies to all of your discussions for Weeks 1 through 3. 

JURISDICTION AND POLICY MAKING OF STATE COURTS 

The jurisdictions of the 50 separate state court systems in the  United States are established in virtually the same manner as those  within the national court system. Each state has a constitution that sets forth the authority and decision-making much legislation "Regulations" setting forth the determining which cases may appear before the nation's most august judicial body. Appeals may reach the Supreme Court through two main avenues. First, there may be appeals from all lower federal constitutional and territorial courts and also from most, but not all, federal legislative courts. Second, the Supreme Court may hear appeals from the highest court in a state - as long as there is a substantial federal question. powers of its trial and appellate Most of the  High Court's docket judges. Likewise, each state legislature  passes laws that further detail the specific powers and prerogatives of judges and the rights and obligations of those consists of cases in which it has agreed to issue a writ of certiorari a discre who bring suit in the state courts. Because no two state constitutions or legislative bodies are alike, the jurisdictions of individual state courts vary from one state to another.

  State courts are extremely important in terms of policy making in the United States. Well over 99 percent of the judicial workload in the United States consists of state, not federal, cases, and 95 percent of all judges in the United States work at the state level. Moreover, the decisions of state jurists frequently have a great impact on public policy. For example, during the 1970s a number of suits were brought into federal court challenging the constitutionality of a state's spending vastly unequal sums on the education of its schoolchildren. (This these cases, state supreme courts invalidated their state's method of financing education, thus requiring the reallocation of billions of dollars.  JURISDICTION AND LEGISLATIVE POLITICS 

Some judges and judicial scholars argue that the U.S. Constitution and the respective state documents confer a certain inherent jurisdiction upon the judiciaries in some key areas, independent of the legislative will. Nevertheless, the jurisdictional boundaries of American courts are also a product of legislative judgments - determinations often influenced by politics. 

Congress may advance a particular cause by giving courts the authority to hear cases in a public policy realm that previously had been forbidden territory for the judiciary. For example, when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, it gave judges the authority to penalize individuals who interfere with "any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin and because he is or has been...traveling in...interstate com occurred because poorer school districts could not raise the same amount of money as could wealthy school districts.) The litigants claimed that children in the poorer districts were victims of unlawful discrimination in violation of their equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution. 

The Supreme Court said they were not, however, in a five-to-four decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973). But the matter did not end there. Litigation was instituted in many states arguing that unequal educational opportunities were in violation of various clauses in the state constitutions. Since Rodriguez such suits have been brought 28 times in 24 states. In 14 of merce." Prior to no jurisdiction 1968 the courts had over incidents that one stemmed from interference by person with another's right to travel. 

Likewise, Congress may discourage a particular social movement by passing legislation to make it virtually impossible for its advocates to have any success in the courts. The jurisdictions of state courts, like their federal counterparts, also are very much governed by - and the political product of - the will of the state legislatures.  JUDICIAL SELF-RESTRAINT 

The activities that judges are forbidden to engage in, or at least discouraged from engaging in, deal not so much with jurisdiction as with justiciability - the question of whether judges in the system ought to hear or refrain from hearing certain types of disputes. Ten principles of judicial self-restraint, discussed below, serve to check and contain the power nical legal standards to institute a suit. The dispute must concern the protection of a meaningful, nontrivial right or the prevention or redress of a wrong that directly affects the parties to the suit. There are three corollaries to this general principle. The first is that the federal courts do not render advisory opinions, rulings about situations that are hypothetical or that have not caused an actual clash between adversaries. A dispute must be real and current before a court will agree to accept it for adjudication. A second corollary is that the parties to the suit must have proper of American judges. These maxims standing. This notion deals with the originate from a variety of sources the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions, acts of Congress and of state legislatures, and the common law. Some apply more to appellate courts than to trial courts; most apply to federal and state judicial systems. A Definite Controversy Must Exist The U.S. Constitution states that "the matter of who may bring litigation to court. The person bringing suit must have suffered (or be immediately judicial Power shall extend to all about to suffer) a direct and significant injury. As a general rule, a litigant cannot bring a claim on behalf of others (except for parents of minor children or in special types of suits called class actions). In addition, the alleged injury must be personalized and im- mediate -not part of some generalized complaint. The third corollary is that courts ordinarily will not hear a case that has become moot - when the basic facts or the status of the parties have significantly changed between the time when the suit was first filed and when Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made...under their Authority" (Article III, Section 2). The key word here is cases. Since 1789 the federal courts have chosen to interpret the term in its most literal sense: There must be an actual controversy between legitimate adversaries who have met all the tech- it comes before the judge(s). The death of a litigant or the fact that the litigants have ceased to be warring

State courts handle various types of cases but in order to bring a matter to a court’s attention a document that is referred to as a pleading must be filed with the court. In many cases, the first pleading is a Complaint. For example, if a homeowner entered into an agreement with a company to build a family room on the homeowner’s house and the company did not finish the job, the homeowner might sue the company for breach of contract. The complaint would allege that the parties entered into an agreement, that the company failed to complete the work, and that the homeowner was damaged monetarily. The party alleging damages, in this case the homeowner, is called the plaintiff. The plaintiff would have the complaint served on the defendant along with a summons. The summons is a document that tells the party he or she has been sued and that if a response is not made to the complaint within a certain time period, a judgment may be entered against him or her. After the defendant receives a copy of the complaint and the summons, he or she may file an answer. The answer denies liability for the alleged wrongdoing. If the parties resolve their differences before trial, the lawsuit is dismissed. If the dispute is not resolved, the case is set for trial.

References:

Seamon, R. (n.d). Two Models of Judicial Decision Making. isc.idaho.gov/judicialedu/judges/DecisionMaking/TwoModelsOfJudicialDecisionMaking01.13.pdf

State University System of Florida. (n.d.). Outline of the U.S. legal system. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ufl2.aa00011695_00001%3Bview