ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how courts seek to resolve conflicts and how court decisions often provoke more controversy, and describes the basic structures and processes of the federal and state court systems. The legal scholar Lawrence Friedman describes four general functions of any judicial system: social control, dispute settlement, social engineering, and regime maintenance. The chapter examines how the United States Supreme Court makes decisions, and assesses the methods used to select judges in the federal and state systems. The typical state court system is a four-tiered structure, in contrast with the three-tiered structure of the federal judicial system. Every justice of the Supreme Court has had some legal training, although not all studied at law school, and many have had some prior judicial experience. The chapter also discusses the origins of judicial review and the nature of constitutional interpretation, and considers the implications of courts as policymakers in the American system of government.
