Most cases involve state and local laws, so they are tried in state and local courts rather than in federal courts. .
Most federal cases start out in district courts, which are trial courts that hear testimony about the facts of a case. There are about ninety district courts in the U.S. and U.S. territories. Each year the district courts handle more than 250,000 civil cases and more than 45,000 criminal cases, but only a small percentage go to trial (Encarta). .
After the district court hears the facts and issues a decision, the decision can be appealed to the second part of the judicial branch, the courts of appeals. The courts of appeals can only consider questions of law and legal interpretation. They cannot decide if the evidence in a case was enough to make a person guilty. The federal court of appeals was created in 1891, and since then, about 50,000 appeals are filed every year (Encarta). Decisions of the appeals court are final unless the Supreme Court agrees to hear further.
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. .
The framers of the Constitution envisioned a separate judicial branch lying between the executive and the legislative branches. By keeping them separate, the framers hoped that it would act as a check on other branches. In addition, separation of the branches was intended to ensure judicial independence from political pressures. (Barone and Cohen, 54).
Statesman Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist papers that "the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power."(Bernotas, 113) 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 indeed proved to be the least powerful branch as Hamilton predicted, but it has played a larger role in the United States than Hamilton ever anticipated.