Hey everybody! What an exciting week we have ahead of us, and that is our discussion
about the federal court system. There's a couple of points I want to make before
we begin talking about the system more specifically. The first point is this:
we are going to be using a lot of terms you probably have never heard before, so
don't be stressed about that. Don't be freaked out about it. Just understand
that there's gonna be a lot of new terms, so this is what I call a "term heavy"
discussion, and I will repeat those terms, and I will do my best to explain them, and
I'll do my job as best I can. So that's point number one. Point number two is
that we're going to be talking about the federal court system. Each state,
including California, has a separate court system, and most of the
interactions that we have are with state court systems, not the federal court
system. So for example, most of the time if you get called up to serve on a jury,
it'll be at a state court. Most of the time any legal action that takes place, any
type of criminal trials that take place, usually the
vast majority of those take place at the state level. So going back to one of our
earlier discussions -- this one about federalism: if you remember, there are
powers called "concurrent powers," and those are powers that both the federal
government and the states have
at the same time. Well the power to create a court system is one of those
concurrent powers, so there's a federal court system and then separate and
concurrently, each state, including California, has its own court system
ok? So the federal court system is what we call a three tier system or three
level system. At the bottom level... there are federal district courts,
and then the next level up...there are circuit courts
also known as federal courts of appeals, and you'll hear me use those words those
terms interchangeably, so understand that they mean the same thing.
Circuit courts and federal courts of appeals mean the same thing. That's the
second level or the second tier of the federal court system, and then at the top
is the United States Supreme Court; there's only one of those! So the next
video is going to be dealing exclusively with federal district courts.