ap govt judiciary 1/30

Amicus Curiae

Latin for "friend of the court," referring to an interested group or person who shares relevant information about a case to help the Court reach a decision.

Appellate courts

The intermediate level of federal courts that hear appeals from district courts. More generally, an appeals court is any court with appellate jurisdiction.

Common law

based on the precedent of previous court rulings rather than on legislation. It is used in all federal courts and 49 of the 50 state courts.

Concurring opinion

opinion of the court that agrees with the majority decision, but disagrees on at least part of the rationale for the decision.

Dissenting opinion

An opinion of the court that disagrees with the majority decision in a case.

District courts

Lower-level trial courts of the federal judicial system that handle most U.S. federal cases.

Judicial activism

The idea that the Supreme Court should assert its interpretation of the law even if it overrules the elected executive and legislative branches of government.

Judicial restraint

The idea that the Supreme Court should defer to the democratically elected executive and legislative branches of government rather than contradicting existing laws.

Judicial review

The Supreme Court's power to strike down a law or an executive branch action that it finds unconstitutional.

Judiciary act of 1789

The law in which Congress laid out the organization of the federal judiciary. The law refined and clarified federal court jurisdiction and set the original number of justices at six. It also created the Office of the Attorney General and established the lower federal courts.

Jurisdiction

The sphere of a court's legal authority to hear and decide cases.

Majority opinion

A court ruling on which more than half of the members agree. The ruling will present the decision of the court and explain the reasoning behind the decision.

Original jurisdiction

The authority of a court to handle a case first, as in the Supreme Court's authority to initially hear disputes between two states.

However, original jurisdiction for the Supreme Court is not exclusive; it may assign such a case to a lower court.

Precedent

Alegal norm established in court cases that is then applied to future cases dealing with the same legal questions.

Solicitor general

A presidential appointee in the Justice Department who conducts all litigation on behalf of the federal government before the Supreme Court and supervises litigation in the federal appellate courts.

Standing

Legitimate justification for bringing a civil case to court.

Writ of certiorari

The most common way for a case to reach the Supreme Court, in which at least four of the nine justices agree to hear a case that has reached them via an appeal from the losing party in a lower court's ruling.