Judicial Branch

                           Types of Law:

Original Jurisdiction, these are the courts that hear a case first and these courts focus on the facts of the courts unlike other jurisdictions.

Appellate Jurisdiction, these courts hear the cases that get appealed from the courts on lower levels like the courts of Original Jurisdiction. They do not look at the facts of the case but they look at the legal issues of a case instead.
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Types of Cases Tried in Federal Court

     Federal courts do not take just any cases, they only take specific cases, usually ones that involve the sate, violations of the constitution, or violations of special federal law cases.There are specialized cases but not many.
    District courts deal with these Federal crimes which can include drug trafficking, tax fraud, civil suits between people in a different state, mail fraud, Bank robbery, and more. Any one of these is likely to end up in a federal court system.

Structure in the Federal Court System

The federal court system has three main types of courts first is the District Courts. These courts have the power to take on many different kinds of federal cases anywhere from a civil case to a federal crime case. Each state must have at least one district, there are 91total districts. They are the courts that have original jurisdiction of their cases and are the courts that actually hold trials
     The second court is the court of appeals or the Appellate courts. To get your case to the appellate court you must bring an appeal to them from the lower courts. The court of appeals has 12 judicial circuits consisting of 178 judges that are appointed by the president. Usually three judges make up a panel in a appeal court and they do not determine whether or not their is a guilty or innocent they only determine and fix all errors that the lower federal courts have made.

      The third court in the federal court system is very important. This is the Supreme court.The Supreme court’s panel of 9 justices , all appointed by presidents are able to choose which cases they want to hear. They pick cases that have conflict with the states and rule on whether or not cases are constitutional or unconstitutional.  

 Some Famous Cases of the Supreme Court

Brown v. Board of Education: In 1954 there was still segregation in the schools. Black children were not allowed into white public schools, although it was a law that the school must be “separate but equal”, meaning they could segregate between whites and blacks but the same amount of money had to be spent on the schools so that it was “fair”. That is exactly why this case is so significant.
    During this time in the south many schools were not following this rule and many black schools were still of a lesser quality than those of the whites, but instead of picking a case from the south to challenge the law they picked a case from a different view. This was the case with a little black girl named Linda Brown, She attended an only black public school that was identical to the white school in almost every aspect. You might be wondering what they had to argue about then , but in this case Linda Brown walked to school everyday and it just so happened that the white school was much closer to where Linda Brown lived and was much more convenient. This argument went all the way to the supreme court where they agreed with Brown and it changed the history of public school forever.

Miranda v. Arizona: Today most people have heard the name Miranda when referring to rights, and all cops have to put into procedure to tell every person their Miranda rights before they go on with their investigation, but before none of that existed until this case was brought to the supreme court in 1966. Miranda was a man you was “ no stranger of criminal acts” he had been arrested for a possibly being involved in a rape and kidnapping of a movie theater attendant who was only 18 years old. when he was pulled in by police to be interrogated he admitted to attempted rape, kidnapping the girl, and a robbery. In court they used all of this information against him as a confession. Trial was looking good for the victim but Miranda’s lawyer claimed the his  fifth amendment was being violated and that the evidence should not be able to be used. This did not work successfully and Miranda was sentenced to 20-30 years in prison. The case was sent to the supreme where the vote ended up to be 5 for Miranda and 4 for the state, and from then on officers must read you your Miranda rights in order to protect the fifth amendment.