Knowledge section

Courts

This section explains the function of courts: resolving disputes, testing the state’s case against an individual, interpreting law, and reviewing the decisions of public bodies. It covers how court hierarchies are built, how appeals work, and why the independence of judges is a matter of institutional design rather than personal virtue.

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Foundational guides in this section, in reading order.

Why do courts matter — to public order, and to individual liberty?
Courts settle disputes without force, test accusations before they count, and measure the state’s own acts against law. They matter to order and to liberty for the same reason: a decision no one can review is not a decision anyone has to justify.
About 9 minutes to read
How are court systems structured — and is every system one pyramid?
Most descriptions show a single pyramid rising to one supreme court. Six of the twelve systems examined here have more than one hierarchy, and what usually decides the route is the nature of the dispute rather than its seriousness.
About 10 minutes to read
What is the difference between a trial court and an appellate court, and how far does an appeal actually go?
Trial courts generally establish facts; appellate courts generally review decisions. Both halves need qualifying: appeal is neither a fresh trial nor a review of law alone as a universal rule, and how far it goes is set by each system.
About 9 minutes to read
Which court is legally competent to hear a particular case?
Court jurisdiction runs on several dimensions at once — territory, subject matter, tier and constitutional competence. It is a different question from where police may act, and from which institution may investigate.
About 9 minutes to read
What does a supreme court actually do — and does the name mean the same thing everywhere?
It does not. “Supreme court” covers a final appellate court, a constitutional court, both at once, and one apex among several. Some apex courts review whether the law was correctly applied rather than deciding the case again.
About 10 minutes to read
Why do some countries have separate courts for disputes with the state?
Several systems route disputes with public authorities into a distinct jurisdiction with its own hierarchy and its own apex. Others send them through the ordinary courts. Neither arrangement is the default.
About 8 minutes to read
Why do some legal systems create separate courts for particular subjects?
Labour, social, tax, family, electoral and military matters are routed to dedicated courts in several systems — sometimes as full parallel hierarchies with their own apex courts, sometimes as distinct courts within one system.
About 8 minutes to read
How do federal countries organise courts between the national and sub-national levels?
Five different designs, not one. Some build parallel systems, some invest sub-national courts with national jurisdiction, some keep the institutions local and the law national — and one federal state declines to decentralise its judiciary at all.
About 10 minutes to read
What arrangements make a judiciary independent, and does having them mean it is?
Independence is built from appointment, tenure, pay, administration and the separation of governing bodies from adjudicating ones. Every one of those is a formal guarantee, and a formal guarantee is not the same as a working one.
About 10 minutes to read
What happens if you do not speak the language the court uses?
Four systems answer differently, and the difference is not how much protection they give. It is whether the proceedings move towards the person or the person is translated into the proceedings.
About 8 minutes to read
What does a court do when someone cannot follow proceedings in the ordinary way?
Presence is not participation. Systems provide intermediaries, interpretation for deafness, and written translation of key documents — and in German law one of those entitlements changes depending on whether the person has a lawyer.
About 7 minutes to read
Does using a court cost money, and what do constitutions say about that?
Usually yes, and two constitutions address it directly — one by requiring any fee to be reasonable and not to impede access, the other by naming specific things that must be free. Neither makes justice costless, and neither claims to.
About 7 minutes to read
Who administers a court system, if not the judges deciding cases?
Somebody has to appoint staff, set budgets, handle complaints and keep the buildings open, and doing that is not judging. Two constitutions create a body for it — and give that body the uncomfortable job of protecting judicial independence while also disciplining judges.
About 8 minutes to read
Is judicial review just another word for appeal?
No. An appeal asks whether a decision was right; judicial review asks whether a body acted within its powers and followed a lawful process. German law makes the difference structural — a court that thinks a statute is unconstitutional may not disapply it, and must stop and refer.
About 9 minutes to read
What is cassation, and does a cassation court sit at the top?
Cassation is a way of examining a judgment, not a rank a court holds. German law proves the point: the Revision is confined to legal error and is heard against first-instance judgments of courts that are not the apex of anything.
About 8 minutes to read
If a challenge succeeds, what actually changes?
Less predictably than the word "won" suggests. Outcomes divide by legal effect — set aside, send back, declare, compensate — and in one constitution the same court striking down the same provision produces different consequences depending on which route the case arrived by.
About 9 minutes to read
Do the courts keep sitting in an emergency, and can an emergency court try you instead?
Four constitutions prohibit courts of exception outright, one protects its constitutional court by name even in a defence emergency — and one permits special courts where the ordinary ones are determined inadequate. The general rule and its exception both need stating.
About 10 minutes to read
Why are court hearings held in public, and when may they not be?
Because a proceeding nobody may watch cannot be checked by anyone outside it. Every text here permits exceptions; Japan names categories that must always be public whatever the court decides, and two systems require the judgment to be public even where the hearing was not.
About 9 minutes to read
Do you become a judge by being appointed after a long career, or by passing an examination and training for the job?
Both, depending on the country. One model recruits by competitive examination and then trains for 31 months; the other appoints from legal practice and asks for five to seven years of it first. They are answering different questions about the same office.
About 8 minutes to read
Why do people who are not lawyers decide criminal cases?
Because most systems decided that some decisions should not belong to professionals alone. There are two ways of arranging it, and only one of them is a jury — the other seats lay members on the bench beside the judges.
About 7 minutes to read
When lay people sit with judges, how many of each are there?
In both mixed systems researched here, the lay members outnumber the professionals two to one — one judge with two lay judges, and three judges with six. The ratio is written into statute, not left to practice.
About 6 minutes to read
Do lay members of a court decide guilt only, or the sentence as well?
One system gives them the judge’s office in full and with an equal vote — but only while the hearing lasts. Another has them decide fact, law and sentence together with the professionals. Neither is limited to the verdict.
About 6 minutes to read
Who is allowed to be called to decide someone else’s case?
In the one system researched, the answer is tied to the electoral roll and bounded at both ends: eighteen or over but under seventy-six, with five years’ residence counted from the age of thirteen.
About 6 minutes to read
What do courts do?
Courts resolve disputes, test the state’s case against individuals, interpret law, and review public decisions. This guide explains those functions and why judicial independence is structural.
About 8 minutes to read

Key ideas

What makes this area difficult to understand from the outside.

Courts do more than criminal trials
Civil disputes, family matters, administrative review of government decisions, and constitutional questions occupy most courts most of the time. Criminal trials are the most visible part of the work, not the largest.
Adversarial and inquisitorial are a spectrum
The distinction between systems where parties drive the case and systems where the court investigates is real but overstated. Most systems mix elements, and the mix has changed over time in both directions.
A trial is a test of a case, not a search for the whole truth
A criminal court decides whether the case brought meets the required standard on the admissible evidence. That is a narrower question than "what happened", and the difference explains many outcomes that appear inexplicable from outside.
Appeals are not a second opinion
Appellate courts generally review for legal error or procedural unfairness rather than re-deciding the facts. This is why an appeal can succeed without any finding that the original outcome was factually wrong, and fail despite doubts about it.
Independence is structural
Appointment procedures, security of tenure, protected pay, immunity for judicial acts, and public reasoning exist so that independence does not depend on individual courage.

How this varies internationally

Court structures, the role of the judge, the use of juries or lay judges, and the availability of appeal differ profoundly between legal traditions and between countries within the same tradition. The single most common structural error is to assume one pyramid rising to one supreme court: Germany’s Basic Law vests judicial power in three distinct categories and names five federal supreme courts, and France runs two separate court orders chosen by the nature of the dispute.

What this section does not cover

Stated explicitly. Scope discipline is a reader service, and in some cases an editorial safety rule.

Coverage of individual cases or outcomes
Profiles of individual judges
Litigation strategy or advice on conducting a case

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Key ideas

Courts do more than criminal trials

Adversarial and inquisitorial are a spectrum

A trial is a test of a case, not a search for the whole truth

Appeals are not a second opinion

Independence is structural

How this varies internationally

What this section does not cover

Related sections