Editing State court (United States) (section)

==Differences among the states==

The foregoing summary is only a very rough generalization. There are a great many "oddities" and "extra wrinkles" from one state court system to the next, although the tendency in most states has been towards rationalization and simplification: "the further back in history one goes, the more confused the situation gets".<ref name="Friedman_Page_61">{{cite book |last1=Friedman |first1=Lawrence M. |last2=Hayden |first2=Grant |author1-link=Lawrence M. Friedman |title=American Law: An Introduction |date=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780190460594 |page=61 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2bJjDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA61 |access-date=December 3, 2023|edition=3rd}}</ref>

*[[Delaware]], [[Mississippi]], [[New Jersey]], [[Tennessee]] and [[Wyoming]] make a distinction between a "court of law" and a "[[court of equity]]" ([[chancery court]]). For the most part in the American legal system, while the distinction between law and [[Equity (law)|equity]] still has some legal consequences, separate court systems are not maintained at the federal level or in other states.<ref name="Friedman_Page_61" />
*[[Texas]] and [[Oklahoma]] have separate courts of last resort for criminal cases and other cases.<ref name="Olson 1999 282" /><ref name="Friedman_Page_61" /> In all other states, there is a single court of last resort.  While collateral attacks on criminal convictions, such as state level [[habeas corpus]] petitions, are usually considered to be technically civil cases, because they are not brought by a prosecutor and do not seek to convict someone of a crime, these suits are, in both states, appealed to the criminal court of last resort, rather than the civil court of last resort.
*The highest appellate court in [[New York (state)|New York]] and the only appellate court in the [[District of Columbia]], is called [[Court of Appeals]] rather than "Supreme Court."  In New York, the [[New York Supreme Court|Supreme Court]] is the court of general jurisdiction, and has both county trial divisions and four regional [[New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division|Appellate Divisions]] that serve as the intermediate appellate courts in the New York judiciary.
*The courts of [[Louisiana]] and the Commonwealth of [[Puerto Rico]] are organized under a [[Civil law (legal system)|civil law]] model with significantly different procedures from those of the courts in all other states and the [[District of Columbia]], which are based upon the traditions of the [[common law]] of England.  The court process used in these jurisdictions differs considerably from that used in the federal courts and the courts of other states in non-criminal cases. However, the U.S. Constitution requires these jurisdictions to use procedures similar to those of other U.S. jurisdictions in criminal cases.
*The courts of one state are generally not required to follow the decisions of the courts of another state, but in the common law legal system it is customary for the courts of one state to look to decisions of other states as persuasive statements of what the law should be in the state making the decision, where express statutory provisions or prior precedent in that state do not control.
*A small number of states lack an intermediate appellate court.<ref name="Olson 1999 282" /> In those states, litigants in general jurisdiction courts usually have the right to appeal their cases directly to the state supreme court.  One of the great informal traditions of American law is that everyone is generally entitled to at least one appeal of right on the merits from an adverse judgment,<ref name="Oakley_Page_28">{{cite book |last1=Oakley |first1=John B. |last2=Amar |first2=Vikram D. |author2-link=Vikram Amar |title=American Civil Procedure: A Guide to Civil Adjudication in US Courts |date=2009 |publisher=Kluwer Law International |location=Alphen aan den Rijn |isbn=9789041128720 |page=28 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ga8WMXi4i4QC&pg=PA28}}</ref> but the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that appeal is not a federal constitutional right, meaning that states are not obligated to provide it.<ref>''Smith v. Robbins'', 528 U.S. 259, 270 n.5 (2000) ("[t]he Constitution does not . . . require states to create appellate review in the first place"); ''M.L.B. v. S.L.J.'', 519 U.S. 102, 110 (1996) ("the Federal Constitution guarantees no right to appellate review").</ref> Many states have rules that permit certain cases such as death penalty cases and election cases to be appealed directly to the state supreme court, even though most civil cases must be appealed first to an intermediate appellate court.
* One major difference is whether states conceptualize of their trial court of general jurisdiction as a single unified court of statewide jurisdiction that merely happens to sit in particular counties or districts, or as a set of separate and coequal courts, one for each county or district. The most extreme exponent of the first position is New York, which has a single Supreme Court that sits as a trial court with general jurisdiction throughout the entire state.<ref>''[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6768289440139654524 Schneider v. Aulisi]'', 307 N.Y. 376, 384, 121 N.E.2d 375 (1954).</ref> The most extreme exponent of the second position is Texas, where each trial court is constituted as a legally distinct entity with a single judge.<ref name="Guittard">Clarence A. Guittard, [https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3691&context=smulr ''Court Reform, Texas Style,''] 21 Sw. L. J. 451, 455-480 (1967). Available through [[HeinOnline]].</ref> The language in the Texas Constitution requiring one judge per court was not fixed until 1985.<ref>[https://lrl.texas.gov/scanned/sessionLaws/69-0/SJR_14.pdf Tex. S.J. Res. 14, 69th Leg., R.S., § 3 (1985) (amending Tex. Const. art. V, § 7)].</ref> Thus, an urban courthouse in Texas normally houses multiple single-judge trial courts sharing concurrent jurisdiction over the same county.<ref name="Guittard" />
*In [[Utah]], civil cases are appealed directly to the state supreme court, which then has the power to refer the case instead to an intermediate appellate court, rather than being appealed first to an intermediate appellate court and then to a state supreme court. Oklahoma has a similar structure: civil cases are appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which can refer them down to the Courts of Civil Appeals. (Criminal cases are appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals and there is no intermediate court for such cases).