The Appellate Courts - Research Paper Example

The legal system of most countries has various levels and as a result, if one of the participants in a case feels discontented/feels that a lower-level court has not judged his or her case fairly; he/she may decide to file a formal appeal, requesting that the case be reviewed in an appellate court. In the event that the appellate court discovers that the lower court erred or used the incorrect legal procedure, for instance, it may decide to overturn the original verdict. History.com documents that the United States’ Supreme Court is a famous example of an appellate court.

It is considered as a court of last resort or final appeal – once it hands down a decision, there does not exist a higher court of appeals. The appellate court system guarantees that individuals who desire to make an appeal can do so. A lawyer/team of lawyers has the responsibility of filing an appeal, and experience with the process of appeal is very useful, seeing that it can aid in the achievement of the desired result. History of the US Appellate Courts The United States’ Court of Appeals had been created by an act of Congress (1891) to ease the Supreme Court of a good deal of its growing appellate duties in addition to remedying dearth in the cumbersome Circuit Court System, which was ultimately eliminated in the year 1911.

The nine appellate courts were not to exercise original jurisdiction or to be trial courts. They were to be the essential middle rung in the three-tiered federal court system, which had been envisaged from the First Judiciary Act of 1789 instituted federal courts, pursuant to the Constitution’s Article 3, section 1. Under the courts of appeal were the United States district courts, which acted as trial courts for criminal and civil cases relating to federal law. The Supreme Court was above the courts of appeal.

The courts of appeal embodied many aspects of the previous circuit courts. The main responsibility of appellate courts is reviewing the decision of a trial court on a given appealed case, looking for ‘mistakes of law’ that the trial court may have made. They do not ‘second guess’ factual issues that the trial courts decided earlier on. In the legal system, the jury resolves factual issues and not the appellate court (Radcliffe, 1). Each court of appeals had a geographic region, which it served.

For the previous Fifth Circuit, that region comprised of Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, as well as the Canal Zone, in essence the same region that the old Fifth Circuit Court served ever since the 1866 re-organization of the circuits. In the year 1869, in an endeavor to fortify the circuits, Congress, sanctioned that a circuit judge be appointed for each circuit. In 1869, President Grant appointed William Burnham Woods as the first judge of the reorganized Fifth Circuit.

Don Albert Pardee succeeded him in 1881 (UScourts.gov, 1). In the 1891 Act, which created the Court of Appeals, Congress authorized a second judge for the Fifth Circuit, and in the year 1892, Texan A.P. McCormick took that position. In 1899, David D. Shelby, an attorney from Huntsville, Alabama and ex- Confederate cavalry officer became the third judge for the Fifth Circuit. The Court of Appeals Act (1891) chose one city in each circuit where court would be take place. In 1930, the number of judges in the Court of Appe