Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:28, 26 April 2012

The original jurisdiction of a court is the power to hear a case for the first time, as opposed to appellate jurisdiction, when a court has the power to review a lower court's decision.

France

The lowest civil court of France, the tribunal de première instance ("Court of Common Pleas"), has original jurisdiction over most civil matters except areas of specialist exclusive jurisdiction, those being mainly land estates, business and consumer matters, social security, and labor. All criminal matters may pass summarily through the lowest criminal court, the tribunal de police, but each court has both original and limited jurisdiction over certain separate levels of offences:

• juge de proximité ("Magistrate Court") - petty misdemeanors and violations;
• tribunal de police ("Police Court") - gross misdemeanors or summary offences (summary jurisdiction);
• tribunal correctionnel ("Criminal Court") - felonies or indictable offences generally;
• cour d'assises ("Court of Sessions") - capital and first-degree felonies or major indictable offences, high crimes, crimes against the State.

For the administrative stream, any administballrative court has original jurisdiction. However, while the Council of State has supreme appellate jurisdiction for administrative appeals, it also has original jurisdiction on a number of matters brought against national governmental authorities including cases against statutory instruments (executive and ministerial orders) and certain types of administrative decisions. These decisions are made up out of 2/3 Congress's vote.

United States

In the United States, courts having original jurisdiction are referred to as trial courts. In certain types of cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has original jurisdiction concurrently with lower courts. The original jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court is governed by Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

In the federal court system and most U.S. states, there is not one type of trial court, but several. That is, there are several specialized courts with original jurisdiction over specific types of matters, and then a court with original jurisdiction over anything not reserved to more specialized courts. In some states, the latter type of trial courts often also have appellate jurisdiction from the more specialized courts, and are therefore called superior courts to distinguish them from inferior courts.

See also

• First instance

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Original jurisdiction" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Wex
• APFN
• The Original Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court

• Legal terms
• Jurisdiction