hi
i'm craig and this is crash course
government and politics as fans of our
series know here at crash course we
believe in hierarchy
first at the top you got me then there's
john green then stan
then brandon then julia then a bunch of
independent contractors wait i'm an
independent contractor
well i'm still at the top anyway then
the rest of it's turtles all the way
down
except at the bottom there's an eagle
anyway it's the strict adherence to
hierarchy that makes cchq run like a
well-oiled machine
the same can be said for the u.s court
system
as you probably remember because you're
a smart rememberer of things the
american court system
is hierarchical which means any
discussion of it cries out for a visual
representation
thought bubble like drake will start
from the bottom the trial courts have
original jurisdiction when you realize
that there are 50 states each with its
own court system
it shouldn't be surprised that the vast
majority of cases start out in state
courts of course most cases never get to
court at all the vast majority of
disputes criminal and civil are settled
outside of court
how is that for efficiency on the
federal side the trial courts are the
u.s district courts there are 94 of them
with 663 judges more or less sometimes
in civil
cases a plaintiff the person bringing
the case will have a choice about
whether to bring that case in state or
federal court but you can only start in
the district courts if your case meets
certain important criteria almost all
criminal cases start in state courts so
if you don't like the result in a trial
court and you have a reasonable claim
that there was something procedurally
wrong with the case or the way the law
was applied you can bring an appeal
notice that if you start in state courts
you usually have more chances for appeal
because most states have two levels of
appellate courts and the federal system
has one appeals courts can refuse to
hear appeals and if they do
you're done one thing to remember the
loser can always try to appeal even if
that loser was the state that failed in
its prosecution federal appeals courts
are called circuit cards and there are
12 of them distributed regionally
throughout the u.s you might guess if
the region where your case is heard
matters and you'd be right judges in the
9th circuit which includes california
and oregon tend to be more liberal than
judges in the 5th circuit federal
appeals are usually heard by panels of
three judges while trials in the
district court are before a single judge
there are four scenarios where the
federal courts have original
jurisdiction and in all cases they must
be brought in a district court they are
cases where the law at issues a federal
law like a claim against obamacare cases
involving treaties which are by
definition federal laws these are pretty
rare and really interesting cases
involving the u.s constitution for
example a case concerning freedom of
religion and cases where the u.s
government is a party to the litigation
the other type of case that can go into
federal court is one involving more than
one state where there's more than
seventy thousand dollars at issue this
makes sense because if the parties in
dispute are in different states they
might not even agree where to have the
trial and federal judges are supposed to
be more impartial than state judges
thanks thought bubble so thoughtful so
bubbly
if you read the news and pay attention
to legal cases most of what you see are
lower court decisions
at least until the spring when the
supreme court starts handing down
decisions these are the ones that tend
to make it into the history books and
that you may have even heard of but how
does a case get to the supreme court
craig
well i will answer that for you that's
my job most of the time the supreme
court has appellate jurisdiction
in fact it's the final court of appeals
if you lose there you've really really
lost
when the court hears a case it's called
judicial review there are however
circumstances when the supreme court has
original jurisdiction and can act like a
trial court
so it's a good thing that most of the
justices are in fact lawyers although
there's no constitutional requirement
that they need to be the court has
original jurisdiction in cases between
the u.s and a state
cases between two or more states cases
involving foreign ministers or
ambassadors
in cases brought by citizens of one
state against citizens of another state
or against a foreign country what do
these cases have in common the main
thing is that you can't imagine there
being a single state where they could
happen
this is especially true in cases
involving foreign officials and then
there are my favorite supreme court
cases crimes committed on the high seas
that's right the supreme court can
exercise original jurisdiction over
pirates this is not as weird as it
sounds because crimes on the high seas
by definition have not happened in any
state so where are you going to have the
trial but most of the time cases that
make to the supreme court are there on
appeal in order for the court to
exercise its appellate jurisdiction the
case must raise a federal question
for example one involving due process or
equal protection or an important federal
statute
statute if you don't know what those
terms mean don't worry
we'll get to them here's the thing
though the supreme court doesn't hear a
lot of cases it doesn't want to
and i don't want to either i understand
they also can't and it's not just
because most of the justices are kind of
old it's because there are only nine of
them and they get requests to review
about 8 000 cases a year out of these
they actually hand down about 80
decisions so they have decision rules to
weed out the cases that they don't want
to hear the first one is that there has
to be a case or controversy which means
that you can't request the court to
review whether or not a law is
unconstitutional before it has gone into
effect
there has to be an actual injury first
another way of saying this is that the
supreme court will not issue advisory
opinions speculating on whether or not a
law might violate the constitution the
second hurdle of potential supreme court
litigan has to get over is called
standing
oh that sounds terrible i wouldn't want
to be standing no this means that in
order to bring a case the parties must
have a substantial stake in the outcome
which
usually means an actual injury lack of
standing is one reason that the court
has refused cases about same-sex
marriage brought by opposite-sex married
people the court will also refuse to
hear a case that is moot mootness which
is a real word i promise
i'm reading it on a teleprompter means
that the case no longer requires a
resolution
say because one of the parties is dead
the flip side of mootness is ripeness if
a potential injury has yet to occur
the case is not ripe it's like a hard
avocado
you're guacamole just not gonna be very
good it's best not to be too anxious
about bringing your case
most of the time you can wait except in
cases like bush v gore where we kind of
needed an outcome so a new president
could move into the white house there's
also a vague decision rule called the
political question doctrine
in some cases the court would rather
that the executive or legislative branch
handle the issue and not get involved
there are certain cases that the court
will almost always take even though all
things being equal they'd rather not
when the circuit courts have reached
different or conflicting conclusions on
the same issue what's known as a circuit
split
the court will usually hear the case to
resolve the confusion the court will
also almost always hear a case where the
federal government itself initiated the
appeal finally the supreme court will
usually take a case that has a clear
constitutional question like one
involving freedom of speech or religion
although there are sometimes
constitutional issues that they feel are
settled or they just don't want to deal
with for a long time for example the
court didn't hear gun control cases and
nowadays they don't usually take
obscenity cases okay so that's the
structure of the court system and how a
case does
or usually doesn't make it to the
supreme court what we haven't really
discussed is what happens when a case
does make it to the supreme court
we'll show you that next time when we
take a shortcut to the supreme court by
suing the ambassador to switzerland for
making such delicious chocolate
it's making me unhealthy thanks for
watching see you next time
we're not actually going to sue
switzerland crash course government and
politics has produced an association
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learn more about their mission and
initiatives at vocal.org crash course
was made with the help of all of these
supreme court justices
thanks for watching
you