The Organization of the Federal Courts Today

The American court system is complex, a function in part of our federal system of government. Each state runs its own court system and no two are identical. In addition, we have a system of courts for the national governments. These federal courts coexist with the state courts. Individuals fall under the jurisdiction of both court systems. They can sue or be sued in either system, depending mostly in what their case is about. The vast majority of cases are resolved in the state courts.

The federal courts are organized in three tiers, like a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the U.S. district courts, where litigation begins. In the middle are the U.S. courts of appeals. At the top is the U.S. Supreme Court. To appeal means to take a case to a higher court. The courts of appeals and the Supreme Court are appellate courts; with few exceptions, they review cases that have been decided in lower courts. Most federal courts hear and decide a wide array of cases; the judges in these courts are known as generalists.

The U.S. District Courts. There are ninety-four federal district courts in the United States. Each state has at least one district court, and no district straddles more than one state. In 1990, nearly 550 full-time federal district court judges dispensed justice in various degrees in almost 267,000 criminal and civil cases.

The district courts are the entry point to the federal court system. When trials occur in the federal system, they take place in the federal district courts. Here is where witnesses testily, lawyers conduct cross-examinations, and judges and juries decide the fate of litigants. There may be more than one judge in each district court, but each case is tried by a single judge, sitting alone.

Criminal and civil cases. Crime is a violation of a law that forbids or commands an activity. Criminal laws are defined in each state's penal code, as are punishments for violations. Some crimes — murder, rape, arson — are on the books of every state. Others — sodomy between consenting adults is one example — are considered crimes in certain states but not all. Because crime is a violation of public order, the government prosecutes criminal cases. Maintaining public order through the criminal law is largely a state and local function. Federal criminal cases represent only a fraction of all criminal cases prosecuted in the United States. The national penal code is very specialized. It does not cover ordinary crimes, just violations of federal laws, like tax fraud or possession of controlled substances banned by Congress.

The definition of crime rests with the legislative branch. And the definition is dynamic, that is, it is subject to change.

Courts decide both criminal and civil cases. Civil cases stem from disputed claims to something of value. Disputes arise from accidents, contractual obligations, and divorce, for example. Often the parties disagree over tangible issues (the possession of property, the custody of children), but civil cases can involve more abstract issues too (the right to equal accommodations, damages for pain and suffering). The government can be a party to civil disputes, called on to defend or to allege wrongs.

Sources of litigation. Today, the authority of U.S. district courts extends to

• federal criminal cases authorized by federal law (for example, robbery of a federally insured bank or interstate transportation of stolen securities).

• civil cases brought by individuals, groups, or government for alleged violation of federal law (for example, failure of a municipality to implement pollution-control regulations required by a federal agency).

• civil cases brought against the federal government (for example, enforcement of a contract between a manufacturer and a government agency).

• civil cases between citizens of different states when the amount in controversy exceeds $50,000 (for example, when a citizen of New York sues a citizen of Alabama in a United States district court in Alabama for damages stemming from an auto accident in Alabama).

Most of the cases scheduled for hearings in the U.S. district courts never are actually tried. One side may be using a lawsuit as a threat to exact a concession from the other. Often the parties settle their own dispute. Less frequently, cases end with adjudication, a court judgment resolving the parties' claims and ultimately enforced by the government. When district judges adjudicate cases, they usually offer written reasons to support their decisions. When the issues or circumstances of cases are novel, judges can publish opinions, explanations justifying their rulings.

Precedent and decision making. Following review of the briefs and, in many appeals, oral argument, the three-judge panel will meet to reach a judgment. One of the three judges attempts to summarize the panel's views, although each judge remains free to disagree with the reasons or with the judgment. The influence of published appellate opinions can reach well beyond the immediate case. For example, a lawsuit turning on the meaning of the Constitution produces a case that then serves as a precedent for subsequent cases; that is, the decision becomes a basis for deciding similar cases in the same way. Although district court judges sometimes publish their opinions, it is the exception rather than the rule. At the appellate level, however, precedent requires that opinions be written.

Decision making according to precedent is central to the operation of our legal system, providing continuity and predictability. This bias in favor of existing decisions is captured by the Latin expression "stare decisis", which means "let the decision stand." But the use of precedent and the principle of "stare decisis" do not make lower-court judges cogs in a judicial machine. "If precedent clearly governed," remarked one federal judge, "a case would never get as far as the Court of Appeals: the parties would settle.

Judges on the courts of appeals direct their energies toward correcting errors in district court proceedings and interpreting the law (in the course of writing opinions). When judges interpret the law, they often modify existing laws. In effect, they are making policy. Judges are politicians in the sense that they exercise political power, but the black robes that distinguish judges from other politicians signal constraints on their exercise of power.

Judges make policy in two different ways. Occasionally, in the absence of legislation, they employ rules from prior decisions. We call this body of rules the common or judge-made law. The roots of the common law lie in the English legal system. Contracts, property, and torts (an injury or wrong to the person or property of another) are common-law domains. The second area of judicial lawmaking involves the application of statutes enacted by Congress. The judicial interpretation of legislative acts is called statutory construction. The application of a statute is not always clear from its wording. To determine how a statute should be applied, judges first look for the legislature's intent, reading reports of committee hearings and debates in Congress. If these sources do not clarify the statutes meaning, the court does. With or without legislation to guide them, judges on the courts of appeals and district courts look to the relevant opinions of the Supreme Court for authority to decide the issues before them.

Although the Supreme Court has the final say on what a law means, its decisions often fail to address the precise issue confronting lower-court judges. This means that federal judges can sometimes exercise as much political power as the High Court justices themselves. For example, in 1955 federal judges in Alabama were called on to determine whether, in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Alabama's racially segregated public transportation facilities violated the Constitution's equal protection clause. Because applicable Supreme Court precedents appeared to go in opposite directions, three federal judges from the Deep South had to decide which path to take.