Politics in the USA, Sixth Edition

Politics and the judiciary 223

into one or other of these categories. Federal laws and decisions of the federal

courts overlap very considerably in many areas with state law, and state law

must always be applied in a way that is consistent with the Constitution as

interpreted by the Supreme Court. Where a dispute exists between citizens

of different states, the federal courts may have jurisdiction of the dispute

even though no federal law is involved.

Cases may be initiated in a state court, decided by the state Supreme

Court, and then appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States on the

grounds that the state has decided the matter in a way that conflicts with the

Constitution or with federal law. A case may be started in the federal courts

on the ground that a state or one of its officials has infringed the Constitu-

tion or a federal law; and a case started in a state court may be transferred

to a federal court. The broad outlines of the American judicial system are

illustrated by the chart in Figure 10.1.

Such a complex system inevitably involves difficult questions of jurisdic-

tion and, as we shall see later, it raises also the problem of the way in which

the decisions taken by the highest court in the land are put into effect in

lower courts. It leads to rather similar consequences in the judicial sphere

to those in other aspects of the federal system. The federal and state courts

work together, but they are also in competition with each other, and in ex-

treme cases litigants can attempt to play off one system against the other,

which leads sometimes, in the words of Dean Griswold, ‘to a sort of legal bat-

tledore and shuttlecock, with cases bouncing back and forth almost endlessly

between the State and the Federal jurisdictions’.

An essential part of the judicial system is the legal profession, which has

in the United States a particular importance. The complexity of the law, the

The Supreme Court of the US

State Supreme Court

State Courts of Appeal

Lower State Courts

(in each of the fifty states)

Circuit Courts of Appeal

US District Courts

Special US Courts

Federal Administrative Agencies

Figure 10.1 The judicial system of the USA