364 CHAPTER 12|THE COURTS
JURISDICTION
The fi nal general characteristic of the legal system is the jurisdiction of the
court: when bringing a case before the court, you must choose a court that actu-
ally has the power to hear your case. For example, if you want to contest a speed-
ing ticket, you would not fi le your case in the state supreme court or the federal
district court, but in your local traffi c court. What if you believed you were the vic-
tim of discrimination in the workplace? Would you sue in state or federal court?
You probably could do either, but the decision would be based on which set of laws
would provide you more protection from discrimination. This varies by state, so
the proper jurisdiction for a given case is often a judgment call based on specifi c
legal questions.Structure of the Court and Federalism
The structure of the court system is just like that of the rest of the political sys-
tem: it is divided within and across levels of government. Across the levels of gov-
ernment, the court system operates on two parallel tracks within the state and
local courts and the national courts. Within each level of government, both tracks
include courts of original jurisdiction, appeals courts, and courts of special juris-
diction. As the “How It Works” diagram shows, the state courts are entirely sepa-
rate from the federal courts, with the exception of the small proportion of cases
that are appealed from a state supreme court to the U.S. Supreme Court. There
is much variation in the structure of state courts in terms of their names and the
number of levels of courts. However, they all follow the same general pattern of
trial courts with limited and general original jurisdiction and appeals courts
(either one or two levels, depending on the state).DISTRICT COURTS
The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the lower federal courts. Workhorses of the fed-
eral system, the district courts handle more than a quarter of a million fi lings a
year. There are 89 districts in the 50 states, with at least one district court for
each state. There are also district courts in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands,
the District of Columbia, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands; this
brings the total to 94 districts with 678 judges.^10 There are two limited
jurisdiction district courts: the Court of International Trade, which
addresses cases involving international trade and customs issues,
and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which handles most claims
for money damages against the United States, disputes over federal
contracts, unlawful “takings” of private property by the federal gov-
ernment, and other claims against the United States.APPEALS COURTS
The appeals courts (called “circuit courts” until 1948) are the
intermediate courts of appeals, but in practice they are the fi nal
court for most federal cases that are appealed from the lower
courts. The losing side in a federal case can appeal to the Supreme
Court, but the highest court in the land hears so few cases that theappeals courts The intermedi-
ate level of federal courts that hear
appeals from district courts. More
generally, an appeals court is any
court with appellate jurisdiction.
PRESIDENTS CAN INFLUENCE THE
direction of the federal courts by
selecting judges who share their
views. In his fi rst term, President
Obama had the opporutunity
to nominate two justices to the
Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor
and Elena Kagan (shown here).
jurisdiction The sphere of a
court’s legal authority to hear and
decide cases.