{"id":1387,"date":"2017-01-09T19:42:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T19:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/montgomerycollege-masterybusinesslaw2\/?post_type=chapter&p=1387"},"modified":"2017-01-09T19:42:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T19:42:39","slug":"understanding-the-us-legal-system","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/montgomerycollege-masterybusinesslaw2\/chapter\/understanding-the-us-legal-system\/","title":{"raw":"Understanding the US Legal System","rendered":"Understanding the US Legal System"},"content":{"raw":"
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Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:<\/p>\n\n

  1. What are the differences between civil and criminal cases, and how are these cases usually resolved?<\/li>\n\t
  2. How do the news and entertainment media depict trials?<\/li>\n\t
  3. How are the federal courts organized?<\/li>\n\t
  4. How does the Supreme Court work?<\/li>\n<\/ol><\/div>\n

    The American legal system handles a vast number of disputes and controversies. Our concern in this text is with civil and criminal cases, the main ways by which courts wield power and influence and make policy.<\/p>\n\n

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    Civil Cases<\/h2>\n

    In civil cases, plaintiffs (people or organizations) initiate lawsuits against defendants; courts resolve disputes by deciding or mediating between the two sides. Civil cases can involve money, contracts, property, personal injury, divorce, or child custody. \u201cI\u2019ll sue you\u201d is a threat to instigate a civil action.<\/p>\n

    The vast majority of civil cases, some seventeen million annually, are filed in state courts, compared to around four hundred thousand in federal courts. State and federal laws establish the type of civil cases their courts can hear. For example, because there is no federal divorce law, all divorce cases are heard in state courts; because Social Security is a federal program, all civil disputes involving it are heard in federal courts.<\/p>\n

    Because of their costs and the often lengthy delays until they are heard in court, only about 1.3 percent of civil suits filed go to trial. Most civil cases are resolved by other means, such as settlements, plea deals, mediation, or arbitration.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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    Criminal Cases<\/h2>\n

    Criminal cases are initiated by the government. They run the gamut from misdemeanors, such as trespassing and disorderly conduct, to felonies, such as armed robbery, rape, and murder. Unlike civil cases, criminal cases can result in the loss of liberty: a jail sentence. Around seven million people in the United States are either in prison, on probation, or on parole for crimes committed.<\/p>\n

    Most criminal laws are passed by states, and the vast majority of criminal cases originate in state courts: roughly twenty-one million criminal cases annually, compared to about seventy-six thousand in federal courts.<\/p>\n

    Around 27 percent of the criminal cases heard in federal courts involve alleged violations of federal drug laws. Often requiring mandatory sentences without parole, these federal laws are much tougher than state laws, so it makes an enormous difference whether a drug offense case is tried in a federal or state court.<\/p>\n

    Only about 4 percent of criminal cases are decided by trial. Prosecutors drop, or do not continue with charges, on another 25 percent. Most of the rest are resolved by guilty pleas without going to trial. Even for murder or manslaughter, a majority of defendants plead guilty. This often entails a plea bargain<\/a><\/span>, in which defendants plead guilty in exchange for a reduced charge. The judge must approve the plea bargain.<\/p>\n

    Except for affluent defendants with high-powered and well-paid attorneys, people involved in criminal cases have an incentive to plea bargain. Defendants who insist on going to trial face sentences that can be far longer than those received by defendants who plead guilty and cooperate with the government. For lawyers and judges, plea bargains save both time and trial costs and also lighten their workloads. Because so many plead guilty, forty-seven million Americans have criminal records.<\/p>\n\n

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    Media Depictions of Trials<\/h2>\n

    Dubbed \u201ctabloid justice,\u201d news depictions of the criminal justice system, especially on cable television, focus on dramatic, sensational, and lurid cases. A notorious instance was the Duke University lacrosse team rape story, which provoked a prodigious amount of often erroneous news coverage as well as outrageous opinions and judgments (notoriously from television commentator Nancy Grace) from March 2006 until April 2007, when all charges against the students were dropped and the case dismissed.<\/p>\n

    The types of cases receiving excessive and inflammatory coverage include those of a basketball star (Kobe Bryant) charged with rape; an actor (Robert Blake) accused of killing his wife; a decorating diva (Martha Stewart) charged with lying to the FBI; a pop star (Michael Jackson) accused of molesting children; and a mother (Casey Anthony) accused of killing her daughter. The media want, as the chief executive of truTV (formerly Court TV) put it, \u201cthe type of trials that have all the melodrama of a soap opera.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

    \n\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"313\"]\"\" Many people\u2019s understanding of and opinions about courts are based on watching television\u2019s fictional judges. Source: Photo (left) courtesy of Susan Roberts, http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Judge_Judy.jpg. Photo (right) courtesy of Phil Konstantin, http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Joebrown.jpg.[\/caption]\n\n<\/div>\n

    Even trials covered live on television may be unrealistic examples of how the US criminal justice system operates. The trial of O. J. Simpson, accused of the murder of his ex-wife and a friend of hers, attracted huge attention from the news media and the public during the mid-1990s. Simpson was a celebrity defendant with sufficient wealth to hire a cast of attorneys and undergo a lengthy trial. In reality, most criminal trials take little time. The Los Angeles Superior Court disposed of nearly fifty-two thousand cases between the time of Simpson\u2019s arrest and his acquittal.\u201cSimpson Trial and Trivia,\u201d US News & World Report<\/em>, October 15, 1995, 43.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Trials are a staple of entertainment drama.\u00a0 Many television series and their spin-offs involve trials. These shows differ drastically from the reality of courts and trials through the addition of drama and emotion: the highlights of cross-examination, attorneys browbeating witnesses and making speeches, and the guilty confessing. They rarely contain procedural elements, and the issues of \u201cjurisdiction, notices to defendants, pleadings, discovery, and choice of a judge or jury trial, all of which can be argued, replied to, and motioned against.\u201d As David E. Kelley, creator of The Practice<\/em> and a former lawyer said, \u201cI am writing the world of law in the way I would like it to be. It\u2019s all a conceit, because most trials are boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Relatedly, trial judges are usually portrayed on television as legitimate and judicious, and their decisions almost always as correct. Consider the pseudorealistic television courtroom shows represented by Judge Judy<\/em> and Judge Joe Brown<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    The prevalence of courtroom shows is a testament to their appeal and to television\u2019s need for cheap and relatively easy-to-produce programming. Frequent viewers believe that judges should\u2014as these \u201cjudges\u201d do\u2014ask questions, be aggressive with litigants, express views about their testimony, and make known their opinions about the outcome of the cases. This is, in fact, the opposite of how most real judges behave.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Organization of the Federal Courts<\/h2>\n

    The first sentence of Article III of the US Constitution created the US Supreme Court\u2014a major innovation. The Articles of Confederation made no provision for a federal judiciary, only for courts created and controlled by the states.<\/p>\n

    Article III also gave Congress the authority to create lower federal courts. After the Constitution was ratified in 1789, Congress quickly did so through the Judiciary Act of 1789<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

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    The Federal District and Appeals Courts<\/h2>\n

    There are 94 federal district courts staffed by 667 permanent and several temporary judges. Every state has at least one district with a district court in it responsible for hearing cases that arise within that geographic area.<\/p>\n

    Above the district courts are the federal courts of appeal. They decide whether or not district courts have made an error in conducting a trial. Judges on appeal courts base their rulings on written and oral legal arguments presented by lawyers for each side. There are no witnesses, no testimony, and no jury. Appellate courts answer questions of law rather than questions of fact.<\/p>\n

    There are currently thirteen courts of appeals, twelve of them based on geographic districts called \u201ccircuits.\u201d There are eleven numbered circuits, each of which has jurisdiction over several states. No state straddles more than one circuit.<\/p>\n

    There is a twelfth circuit for the District of Columbia (known as the \u201cDC Circuit\u201d). The thirteenth circuit is the court of appeals for the \u201cFederal Circuit,\u201d which hears appeals from US Courts of Federal Claims, International Trade, the Patent and Trademark Office, and others. There are approximately 179 judges on the courts of appeals.<\/p>\n

    A case in district court is usually presided over by one judge, whereas an appeal before a court of appeals is typically heard by a panel of three judges. A majority vote of the panel is necessary to overturn a lower-court ruling. The court of appeals issues a written ruling explaining its decision.<\/p>\n

    Every litigant in federal court has the right to appeal an unfavorable ruling from the district court. However, because it is expensive to appeal, only about 17 percent of eligible litigants do so. Moreover, higher courts hear few of the cases appealed and rarely reverse lower-court decisions.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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    The Supreme Court<\/h2>\n

    The Supreme Court<\/a>, the nation\u2019s highest tribunal, hears cases arising under the Constitution or the laws of the United States. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the number of Supreme Court justices, and it has changed the number several times. The Court started with five justices; it now has nine.<\/p>\n

    The Constitution does not stipulate any specific qualifications, not even a minimum age or legal training, for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges. Of the over one hundred individuals who have served on the Supreme Court, all except four women and two African American males have been white men.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    How the US Supreme Court Works<\/h2>\n

    Article III and the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution require that the Supreme Court be the first court to hear certain types of cases. This original jurisdiction is limited to cases<\/p>\n\n