Court History

Court History and Purpose

Court History and Purpose

Courts can be found all over the world with each one possessing its own identity and ideals of how they implement the laws of their lands. Whether one envisions those in power condemning perpetrators to the “gulags” of way back when or to dirty archaic prisons of third world countries, we can rest assure that American courts have matured considerably over time. Courts in America have specific purposes, are a diverse system comprised of the federal and state courts, and have played numerous roles within the justice system over the course of time. We will look at those areas more closely and see how they contributed to the role of courts in today’s criminal justice system.

Courts started out as a tool of society to be used to control and reprimand those who failed to follow the norms of the group. Courts of today are defined as an agency of the government, guided by an established set of guidelines and are responsible for deciding cases, and settling controversies and disputes of those guidelines by judicial officers, (Siegal, Schmalleger, Worrall, 2011). The primary elements of a court are that it has proper legal authority, normally found in the judicial branch of the government, and are empowered to make decisions that are binding, (2011).

The American court system is a dual system made up of federal and state courts. It is identified as a dual system because specific areas of litigation are separated under the responsibility of federal and state with some overlapping areas. The federal court system is comprised of the Courts of Appeals, Courts of Appeals for the Federal Circuits, the Courts of Military Appeals and the Supreme Court, (Schmalleger, 2009). The state court system is made up of Trial Courts of Limited Jurisdiction, Probate Court, Trial Courts of General Jurisdiction, Intermediate Appellate Court, and State Supreme Court, (2009). Under the parameters of each court system, federal encompasses federal criminal law and state covers state criminal law, each possessing a hierarchy within in own system. In a larger scope, state cases can be heard in federal courts, and higher courts can alter the decisions of lower courts, (Siegal, Schmalleger, Worrall, 2011). The dual court system is a well functioned concept, where states are afforded the opportunity to make and enforce their laws, and the federal is the central governing body whose powers are well defined by the United

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