Talk:State supreme court

Page title, possible errors

This page is terribly written. At the very least, it should be retitled "court of last resort." Secondly, the notion that state courts of last resort don't "do factual findings" is in error, as several states have supreme courts with original jurisdiction in some matters, just as the U.S. Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in some matters.

You're right that there are a few minor errors, but overall, the page is fine. Furthermore, your renaming proposal is silly. Can you actually cite to a single source, anywhere, that regularly calls them "courts of last resort?" Google Book Search (which searches the full content of thousands of books that Google has scanned in by hand) returns 34,100 hits for the phrase "state supreme court," and Book Search is still in beta (it will be much larger in a few years). In contrast, "court of last resort" gets only 9,850 hits, and many of the hits are clearly referring to court of last resort in its correct sense, meaning the highest court of any jurisdiction. This would include, for example, the European Court of Justice for European Union jurisdictions.--Coolcaesar 06:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't the phrase "court of last resort" describe the function of the courts that are typically named "Supreme Courts"? A page called "State Legislatures" similarly might describe its topic as "representative law-making bodies." The original title is good. --Editing 17:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Function of State Supreme Courts, clear errors

State Supreme Courts, do in fact, make fact finding decisions. In the State judicial system, there are Trial courts, Appellate courts, and Supreme courts. The Trial Courts make fact finding decisions. If a party to the decision does not agree with the decision, he has the write to appeal to the State Appellate Division. The Appeals Courts do not make finding of fact. They determine if the Trial Court made an egregious error. If so, the case is remanded back to trial. If not, the decision of the trial court is affirmed. If a party to the case does not agree with the decision of the Appellate Court, he then has a right to make an appeal and request a writ of certiorari to State Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court grants the the right to hear the case, and has determined that there is some possible error in both the decisions of the Trial Court and the Appellate Court, they grant the writ of certiorari and hear the case themselves. At that point, they do make fact finding decisions. Without decisions of the State Supreme Courts, we would have no "common law precedent" and thus no binding precedent on the lower courts in the state judicial systems. Sometimes the State Supreme Courts and the State Appellate Courts are varied in name depending on the state and it makes it very difficult to determine exactly what division they are representing, especially in the Northeastern States. For example: The Court of Appeals of New York is actually what we would commonly refer to as the The New York Supreme Court and The New York Appellate Division is actually what we would commonly refer to as the The New York Court of Appeals. Source for all of the above: Introduction to Law and the Legal System 10th Edition by Frank August Schubert --Editing 11:28, 22 November 2011 (MLSchlenker)Mlschlenker (talk) 17:31, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Court locations

It might be worth noting the cities in which the courts are located, because not all of them are in state capitals. Alaska's supreme court is in Anchorage, not Juneau, for example. Are there others? --Editing 17:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There is also the phenomenon of state supreme courts that regularly sit at multiple sites (that is, riding circuit). For example, dating back to the 1860s, the Supreme Court of California has always heard cases in both Northern and Southern California. And it's headquartered in San Francisco, not the state capital of Sacramento. There is a branch office in Sacramento but it is used very infrequently; the huge number of litigants in Los Angeles causes that branch office to be used much more often than the Sacramento office. --Coolcaesar 05:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

52 states

If we add up the number of states in each given mode of selection, there are 52 states. 75.216.113.149 (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Strange edits by User:Green Giant and User:ImperfectlyInformed

User:Green Giant did several edits lately that I just noticed. The move of the article to "State supreme courts of the United States" was quite unwise and should have been proposed here first. The only other country that regularly uses the term "state supreme courts" in English is Australia, and Australians do not use the term anywhere nearly as much as Americans do. The result is that hundreds of articles that link to this article will have to be modified to fix the redirect. Or we can simply move this back to the more sensible title "state supreme court."

Also, User:ImperfectlyInformed's analysis of the influence of the Supreme Court is simply incorrect. As nearly every U.S. lawyer learns in first-year civil procedure and con law in law school (and learns again while cramming for the bar exam), 28 U.S.C. § 1257 limits the Supreme Court's authority over state supreme courts only to situations where federal law or a federal treaty is at issue. Any questions before I go and fix that inaccurate edit? --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:49, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:CONCISE, "of the United States" is unnecessary disambiguation. Also, per WP:BRD, a bold but controversial move that is made without discussion can be reverted without discussion, and the original page mover can then seek a discussion by filing a move request. I will revert the move now on that basis. bd2412 T 23:10, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

That is not the type of edit that should be marked as minor. II | (t - c) 23:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Which edit is marked as minor? bd2412 T 00:14, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

The [1]. Might have been an automatic setting or something though? II | (t - c) 00:22, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Odd. There doesn't seem to be any option to mark a page move as a minor edit (or otherwise). bd2412 T 00:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

How is it inaccurate? I simply summarized the conclusions of Benesh & Martinek, which you should review before "fixing". We should rely on secondary sources rather than editors' interpretation of specific statutes. "Federal law" is a broad area and includes the Constitution which can broadly invalidate state laws (1257 says "where the validity of a statute of any State is drawn in question on the ground of its being repugnant to the Constitution, treaties, or laws of the United States"). The Supreme Court certainly wades into state law, sometimes on the basis of the Constitution and sometimes on the basis of preemption due to federal laws, and there's nothing in my edit (State_supreme_courts_of_the_United_States#Influence_of_Supreme_Court) which contradicts that. By the way, as so many people have reminded you so many times, your arrogant "know-it-all" tone sounds immature. II | (t - c) 23:15, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with ImperfectlyInformed that Coolcaesar's choice of words is inappropriate at best. The second sentence in that second paragraph should have focussed on the issue by starting with the relevant part of the Code, and not what "nearly every U.S. lawyer learns in first-year civil procedure and con law in law school (and learns again while cramming for the bar exam)".

As for the move, it seemed an appropriate article name but I have no objection to the article being moved back. However, I do object to the U.S.-centric and Anglo-centric reasoning. Quite apart from Australia, there are other "subnational states" outside the U.S. with "Supreme Courts/Tribunals" but they just happen to use a language other than English, e.g. the Mexican states of Baja California Sur, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Tamaulipas. The fact that Wikipedia doesn't yet have articles on these courts doesn't mean that they don't exist; it just shows the systemic bias displayed by comments like "The only other country that regularly uses the term "state supreme courts" in English is Australia".

The other concern about fixing links is a weak argument that is several years behind the times, seeing as we have semi-automated tools such as AWB. As I said above, focus on the issue and steer clear of weak parochial arguments. Green Giant (talk) 03:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

The title of this article has been stable for over twelve years, making it one of the oldest titles in Wikipedia. There is no need to move it to a less concise title unless the current title requires disambiguation, which would require a showing that this topic is not the primary topic of this title. Also, other countries with "states" would not necessarily translate terms like "Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado" as "State Supreme Court". bd2412 T 04:01, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it is a concise title but I disagree with the assumption that readers will only be looking for U.S. courts if they search for "State supreme court". I also disagree about translations, because it doesn't have to translate as exactly "State Supreme Court", it just has to be the supreme court of the state. Not all the U.S. state supreme courts use the same terminology, otherwise we would have to leave out the Maryland Court of Appeals, the New York Court of Appeals, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Green Giant (talk) 04:14, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

On the concern about the Supreme Courts influence, I cannot see what is wrong with ImperfectlyInformed's edit, except that it could do with citing the relevant part of the U.S. Code as a reference. I find the use of statements like "Any questions before I go and fix that inaccurate edit?" to be going down the slippery slope of not assuming assuming good faith. Green Giant (talk) 03:44, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

First, kudos to BD2412 for backing me up on the page title issue. The term "state supreme court" is predominantly used to refer to the highest courts of U.S. states. Period (or full stop).

Second, I keep forgetting that not all school systems mandate mastery of close reading of texts. To clarify what was implicit (though obvious) in my statements above, the specific issue I have with II's edit is with the following bolded words: "The Supreme Court of the United States may hear appeals from state supreme courts particularly if there is a question of law under the United States Constitution."

That vague phrasing implicitly leaves room for the possibility of plenary appeals from state supreme courts to the high court on all issues, a thing which does not exist (and the lack of such a thing is one of the first things that all U.S. law students are required to master). Those terms should be replaced with "can" and "only" and the sentence enlarged to clarify that it can hear appeals from state supreme courts only where there is a federal issue. State law enters the picture only to the extent that it presents a federal issue and no further. If a petition for cert can't find a federal issue in the state legal issues that were argued in the state courts, and if the federal issue wasn't adequately litigated in the first instance before all state courts and preserved for the high court's review, there is no way it's going up on cert.

I also looked at the Benesh & Martinek article. It seems to have the kind of decent but incomplete analysis that is typical of books about the legal system by people who haven't actually practiced law. A critical issue that any attorney with appellate experience would ask---but which was not specifically addressed in the article---was the number of times in which the high court in a one-sentence order summarily granted certiorari, vacated and reversed the lower court's decision with directions to reconsider in light of one of the high court's opinions. That number is essential to fully understanding the high court's impact on lower courts. There are a number of published opinions where the Supreme Court expressly scolded the lower court for failing to get the hint after such a summary reversal, thereby forcing the Supreme Court to grant cert, allow merits briefing and argument, and issue a real opinion. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:39, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Your comments again make me roll my eyes. If anything, in my view the complaint should be that the wording suggests that only constitutional issues can be appealed. Go right ahead and rework it if you think you can make it more understandable. You could also work adequate and independent state ground into the section. It should be noted, "of course" (insert your haughty tone), that it is only an alleged rather than actual federal issues which determines whether something can be appealed to the high court. Issues which are not really federal can be appealed as long as the appellant argues that there's some federal issue; as far as I know there is no screening mechanism prior to the high court itself to filter those out. Sometimes these appeals are simply denied. In theory at least, in some cases they are actually heard: 4 justices decide they want to hear it and after hearing it, a majority issue an opinion determining that there is no federal issue. There's a balance between precision and brevity, but "of course" most lawyers' writing fails spectacularly on both counts, regardless of their schooling. II | (t - c) 00:46, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Technically, a claimant could file a suit in a state court seeking to enjoin martian invaders from beaming mind control rays at them. When the suit is thrown out by the state court, this action could be appealed through the state courts to the state supreme court, and from there an appeal could be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. The fact that such an appeal could be filed is not the same as saying that the U.S. Supreme Court could actually hear the case. bd2412 T 02:53, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Haha. Fair point taken! II | (t - c) 06:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

   I was about to crack wise, asking whether such a suit would filed alleging the martians to be natural persons or a corporation. But that reminded me of having heard of a customs case named something like "U.S. v. 10 barrels of lard" or "...12 goats"; i think i heard nothing beyond that about the case.
--Jerzy•t 09:13, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Terminology, adding titles of judges, etc.

I had hoped to find some terminology preferences such as the titles worn by judges at state appellate courts, and whether there is a lot of variation. Imagine the predicament of a court interpreter or legal writer groping for equivalents of titles used for judges in state appellate courts in other countries, for instance. Literal translations are often conceptually misleading and making stuff up runs the risk of accidentally choosing a title that has a specific and incompatible technical use in another context. For instance, Illinois courts like to call prosecutors states' attorneys and some other states refer to them as district attorneys, whereas military and immigration courts call them trial attorneys. I came to this section looking for rank hierarchies of state appellate court judges, but found none. Lawyers in other states, foreigners trying to make sense of something, and yes, translators, would benefit from adding some title info to the terminology section. translator (talk) 21:05, 26 March 2014 (UTC)