State supreme court

In the United States, a state supreme court (known by other names in some states) is the ultimate judicial tribunal in the court system of a particular state (i.e., that state's court of last resort). On matters of state law, the decisions of a state supreme court are considered final and binding on state and even United States federal courts. Generally, the state supreme court, like most appellate tribunals, is exclusively for hearing appeals of legal issues. It does not make any finding of facts, and thus holds no trials. In the case where the trial court made an egregious error in its finding of facts, the state supreme court will remand to the trial court for a new trial. This responsibility of correcting the errors of inferior courts is the origin of a number of the different names for supreme courts in various state court systems. The court consists of a panel of judges selected by methods outlined in the state constitution. State supreme courts are completely distinct from any United States federal courts located within the geographical boundaries of a state's territory, or the federal United States Supreme Court (although appeals, on some issues, from judgments of a state's highest court can be sought in the U.S. Supreme Court). Under American federalism, a state supreme court's ruling on a matter of purely state law is final and binding and must be accepted in both state and federal courts. Where applicable, state supreme courts also apply federal law. Federal appellate review of state supreme court rulings on federal matters may be sought by way of a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938), no part of the federal Constitution actually grants federal courts or the federal Congress the power to directly dictate the content of state law (as distinguished from creating altogether separate federal law that in a particular situation may override state law). Clause 1 of Section 2 of Article Three of the United States Constitution describes the scope of federal judicial power, but only extended it to 'the Laws of the United States' and not the laws of the several or individual states. It is this silence on that latter issue that gave rise to the American distinction between state and federal common law not found in other English-speaking common law federations like Australia and Canada. One of the informal traditions of the American legal system, derived from the common law, is that all litigants are guaranteed at least one appeal after a final judgment on the merits. However, appeal is merely a privilege provided by statute in 47 states and in federal judicial proceedings; the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that there is no federal constitutional right to an appeal. Since a few states lack intermediate appellate courts, the state supreme court may operate under 'mandatory review', in which it must hear all appeals from the trial courts. This was the case, for example, in Nevada (prior to 2014). Such judicial systems are usually very congested. Most state supreme courts have implemented 'discretionary review,' like their federal counterpart. Under such a system, intermediate appellate courts are entrusted with deciding the vast majority of appeals. Intermediate appellate courts generally focus on the mundane task of what appellate specialists call 'error correction,' which means their primary task is to decide whether the record reflects that the trial court correctly applied existing law.