Judicial Branch.

Judicial Branch. I INTRODUCTION Judicial Branch, the portion of the United States national government that decides cases arising under federal laws and under the Constitution of the United States. The judicial branch interprets laws that have been passed by the legislative branch (Congress) and approved by the president of the United States, who leads the executive branch. Article III of the Constitution vests the judicial power in "one supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time establish." This means that apart from the Supreme Court, the organization of the judicial branch is left in the hands of Congress. Beginning with the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress created several types of courts and other judicial organizations, which now include lower courts, specialized courts, and administrative offices to help run the judicial system. II ROLE IN THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM Federal courts have a leading role in interpreting laws, rules, and other government actions, and determining whether they conform to the Constitution. This function of judicial review was asserted in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of Marbury v. Madison. Judicial review includes both interpreting the law and judging cases. First, in Marshall's words, "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." This need to explain the law stems from the fact that the Constitution and many laws include vague words or phrases. The ambiguity of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, for example, makes it one of the most important sources of cases argued before the Supreme Court. The amendment guarantees citizens "due process of law" and "equal protection of the laws." The meaning of these phrases is unclear, leading to protracted court battles over the application of the 14th Amendment to groups such as racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, and legal and illegal aliens. Confusion and disagreement over the amendment have thrust the courts into disputes over affirmative action, abortion, sexual preferences, welfare benefits, and the rights of the disabled. Striking down laws or practices that violate the Constitution is another function of judicial review. Although the Court voided few laws during its first hundred years, it proved much more willing to take such strong steps in the 20th century. Since Marbury v. Madison, about 150 federal laws have been struck down in whole or in part, along with about 1000 state laws and more than 100 municipal ordinances. The courts do not always have the final say in settling issues of legal interpretation. Working together, Congress and the states can compel the courts to accept a legal principle by amending the Constitution. After the Supreme Court ruled that income taxes were unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. in 1895, for example, Congress and the states ratified the 16th Amendment in 1913 to permit such taxes. Amending the Constitution is difficult and is usually time consuming, however. The president and members of Congress have their own ideas of what the Constitution permits, and on occasion they may try to impede or simply ignore the courts' decisions. The president of the United States appoints federal judges, but these appointments are subject to approval by the Senate. Once confirmed by the Senate, federal judges have appointments for life or until they choose to retire. Federal judges can be removed from their positions only if they are convicted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, but this has happened on only a few occasions. The life-long appointments of federal judges makes it easier for the judiciary to stay removed from political pressure. The long terms mean that presidential appointees to federal courts will have an influence that lasts for decades, so the Senate closely scrutinizes many appointments, and sometimes blocks them altogether. III STRUCTURE The federal courts--which include district courts, courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court--handle only a small part of the legal cases in the United States. Most cases involve state and local laws, so they are tried in state and local courts rather than federal courts. Despite its relatively narrow jurisdiction, the caseload of the federal court system usually increases every year. To cope with the rapidly rising volume of work, Congress has repeatedly expanded the number of lower federal courts and judges. A District Courts Most federal cases start out in the district courts, which are trial courts--courts that hear testimony about the facts of a case. There are about 90 district courts, including one or more in each state, one in the District of Columbia, one in Puerto Rico, and three territorial courts with jurisdiction over Guam, the Virgin Islands of the United States, and other U.S. territories. Each district is assigned from 2 to 28 judges, and there are about 650 district court judges in all. Each year the district courts handle more than 250,000 civil cases and more than 45,000 criminal cases, but only a tiny percentage of the civil and criminal cases actually go to trial. B Courts of Appeal After a district court hears the facts of a case and issues a decision, the decision can be appealed to the second tier in the judicial branch, the courts of appeals. The appeals courts can consider only questions of law and legal interpretation, and in nearly all cases must accept the lower court's factual findings. An appeals court cannot, for example, consider whether the physical evidence in a case was enough to prove a person was guilty. Instead, the appeals court might consider whether the district court followed appropriate rules in accepting evidence during the trial. The federal appeals courts system was created in 1891 to assist the Supreme Court with its workload. About 50,000 such appeals are filed every year. For appeals purposes, the United States is divided into 12 judicial areas called circuits, each with an appeals court containing from 6 to 28 judges. Every state, territory, and the District of Columbia belongs to an appeals circuit . An additional appeals court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, has nationwide jurisdiction over major federal questions. Decisions of the appeals courts are final, unless the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear a further appeal. In district courts, most cases are heard by a single judge. In the appeals courts, cases are usually heard by a panel of three or more judges. When all of the court's panels of judges sit together to hear a case the court is said to be sitting en banc. C Supreme Court The United States Supreme Court is the highest court of the country. It consists of nine judges called justices, including a chief justice and eight associate justices. This number has remained steady for decades and now seems fixed, although in the 19th century the Court's size varied. The Court has complete control over which cases to hear from among the approximately 7000 it receives each year. Most of the cases are appeals from lower federal courts or from state courts, and a handful come from other parts of the Court's jurisdiction (see Supreme Court of the United States: Selecting Cases). The Court typically issues written decisions in fewer than a hundred cases a year. All cases are heard and decided by the entire Court, except in rare cases when a justice chooses not to participate because of a conflict of interest or other potential prejudicial interest in a case. As with all other federal judges, members of the Supreme Court are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They also receive appointments for life, subject only to impeachment for serious crimes or improprieties. Because the Supreme Court exercises sweeping authority in the political system, each appointment to the high court has become highly controversial. The White House carefully screens candidates to make sure that they reflect the president's legal views, and to ensure that nothing in their personal backgrounds might make confirmation difficult. The Senate usually scrutinizes the president's nominees to the Supreme Court more closely than it does the nominees to lower federal courts. About a dozen nominees have been rejected outright by the Senate, and others have not been acted upon or have withdrawn in the face of opposition. D Special Courts Congress has established several courts to decide cases arising within its legislative powers. These are called legislative courts because they lie outside of the Constitution's Article III. For example, the Court of Federal Claims hears cases of people who file claims against the government and seek money as a result. The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces is the final appeals court for court-martial convictions in the armed forces. There is also a separate appeals court that deals with cases involving veterans benefits. The Tax Court tries and decides cases involving federal taxes, tax exemptions for charities, and other tax-related matters. E Administration The judicial branch employs about 30,000 people, including judges, clerks, and other staff. The management and organization of the judicial workload is shared by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Federal Judicial Center. In addition, standards for sentencing criminal offenders are established by the United States Sentencing Commission, which is an independent agency. IV HISTORY The framers of the Constitution envisioned a separate judicial branch lying between the executive and legislative branches. By keeping the judiciary separate, the framers hoped that it would act as a check on the other branches. In addition, separation of the judicial branch from the executive and legislative branches was intended to ensure judicial independence from political pressures. Statesman Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist papers that "the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power." Because the judiciary lacked the lawmaking or enforcement powers of the other branches, he argued, its authority would rest solely on the quality of its judgments. The judicial branch has proved to be the least powerful branch as Hamilton predicted, but it has played a larger role in United States history than Hamilton anticipated. In the country's early years, Supreme Court justices were responsible not just for hearing cases that came before the high court, but also for traveling to sit as circuit court judges. The justices spent much of the year traveling around the country tending to these circuit court duties, a task known as "riding circuit." As the federal caseload grew, the burden on the Supreme Court justices became overwhelming. In 1869 Congress created nine circuit court judgeships, freeing the justices of their circuit-riding responsibilities. The judicial branch has frequently been at the center of controversial political issues. In 1857, for example, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that African Americans were not citizens, a decision that was later seen by many historians as leading to the United States Civil War. Lower courts have also helped shape American history. During the Watergate scandal, for example, a district court and courts of appeals issued decisions that compelled President Richard Nixon to release tape recordings implicating him in the controversy. See also Supreme Court of the United States; Courts in the United States. Contributed By: Roger H. Davidson Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.