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Judicial Power: Definition & Examples

Chapter 16 /  Lesson 3   Transcript
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  • 0:00 The Judiciary Power
  • 1:16 What Is a Judiciary?
  • 2:32 How Does the System Work?
  • 4:18 Criminal vs Civil
  • 5:54 Lesson Summary
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Lesson Transcript
Instructor: Mark Pearcy
What is the judiciary? How does it work? What can it do and when? The U.S. court system has two main levels, two types of practice, and two types of law, but it is actually pretty easy to understand.

The Judiciary Power

If you were designing a government, there are a few things you would have to do pretty regularly. For instance, you would need a body to make laws, and you would need another body (or maybe just one person) to carry out, or execute those laws. But how do you know if the laws are right? And how do you settle arguments or disputes that may come up over how the laws are carried out?

The Founding Fathers faced a similar question in the design of the U.S. Constitution. The Congress was going to make laws, as described in Article I, a location that ought to make clear just who the Framers thought was going to be the most powerful component of the government, and the President was going to carry them out, or execute them. As for the other duty, judging laws, well, it's clear the Founding Fathers didn't give a ton of thought to this. In fact, the article describing the judicial branch, Article III, is one of the shortest and least-detailed parts of the whole document. However, over the last two centuries, thanks to federal laws, crucial court cases, and fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants improvisation, the judiciary has become just as influential as the other branches of the U.S. government.

What Is a Judiciary?

The judicial branch's main job, as it is in any nation, is to resolve disputes, whether between separate parties or between a party and the government. The U.S. version is a little complicated, since it's actually two different systems, with two different types of law. There is a federal system and a state system, both of which include criminal and civil law. In both systems, and with both types of law, there are two main levels: trial courts and appellate courts. This sounds confusing, but gets clearer as you look at it.

The federal court system is largely an invention of the U.S. Constitution and subsequent federal law, especially the Judiciary Acts of 1789 and 1801, which created the courts below the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the crown jewel of the court system, serving as the final stop for appealed federal cases and some state cases, though that is much less common. The fifty states all have their own Supreme Courts, too. They handle state-based appeals, and only on issues of major constitutional importance or relevance do those cases end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which only handles a few dozen cases per year.

How Does the System Work?

If a person commits a crime, he is charged by the state for violating the law. This is the standard scenario for most crime in the U.S. Of course, you could be charged in federal court, but you would have to either break federal law, or commit a crime on federally-owned land, or both. Much more often, states handle most criminal prosecution.

If you're charged by the state, you start off at the lowest level, the trial court, which is what most of us think of when we think of courts. There are juries most of the time, and judges, and witnesses that offer testimony, and lawyers that question them. This is what's called a court of original jurisdiction, which is a fancy way of saying that it's the place where the trial process begins.

If you are acquitted, found not guilty, the whole process stops right there. If you're convicted, that is, you're found guilty, however, then you have the right to appeal to the next level up. Every court above the trial court is an appellate court, and their only job is to make sure the lower court didn't commit some error. If you win at any level above the trial court, the process stops and you are free; but if you lose, you can continue to appeal, all the way to your state's Supreme Court. If you lose there, however, you are generally out of luck.

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Ch 16. The Federal Judicial System: Help and...
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