Why is a case often decided by more than one instance? Often times a case is decided by more than one instance. For example, a defendant may lodge an appeal against the judgment given by a trial judge. Where the court of appeal found in favour of the claimant, the defendant may ask another court to dismiss the case. Isn't one instance not enough? What is the rationale behind this?
Overview Trials and hearings before a judge aren't random, but they aren't terribly predictable either. The best empirical studies of high stakes felony jury trials suggest that the accuracy of a jury in a case that doesn't plea bargain is about 90%. They are right 90% of the time and wrong 10% of the time. The appeal process involving multiple instances exists primarily to correct these errors. If the first trial is 90% accurate and larger, more experienced panels are more likely to get it right, the likelihood of a correct result in 2-3 tries becomes more acceptable. (Easy cases settle.) Bench trials (i.e. trials to a single trial court judge in common law systems) are just as final and probably not more or less accurate on average, but trade a more experienced fact finder who understands the process for the disadvantages of having only a single perspective on the facts from someone who doesn't have to persuade anyone else that he or she is right. The appellate process in civil law systems is quite different and more likely to change the result than it is in common law systems, largely due to two factors: the need to preserve the jury trial right in common law systems and a much smaller number of judges in common law systems. Common law systems strive towards a get it right the first time or bust in one big event model, civil law systems creep towards a correct result bit by bit. Until the 1890s in the U.S., in federal criminal jury trials (and many state criminal trials), there were no direct appeals at all, only the equivalent of modern habeas corpus petitions. Civil Law System Instances In civil law systems, a first instance judges will take testimony and documentary evidence and argument in a series of hearings (not necessarily in one continuous compact trial), recording the testimony with personal notes rather than a verbatim transcript, and applying law to fact on a piecemeal basis that narrows the scope of the proceeding as evidence and argument trickles in. This results in a court order which will become a final order unless appealed. In "small" case the first instance court may be one judge, in a more serious one it might be three judges. The first instance court looks primarily to statutes and legal treatises for legal guidance with case law precedents taking only a secondary role that is not strictly binding. Because testimony is delivered to a judge, there are few if any rules of evidence. There is not a great analogy to this phase in most civil procedure systems today, but it is a lot like a preliminary hearing in a criminal case or a preliminary injunction hearing in a case where injunctive relief is the main remedy sought at trial, or a traverse of an attachment in a common law court system. If either party thinks that there were serious errors of law or fact in the first instance judge's ruling that change the outcome, they can appeal the case to second instance court where hears any issues upon which there is an alleged error of law or fact de novo before a new, more senior and more numerous panel of judges (typically two more judges than in the first instance court). The availability of de novo review in a second instance court makes trial preparation in the first instance court much less expensive than trial preparation in the U.S. or U.K. where any factual error in the first instance court is almost impossible to overturn on appeal and where there is no time to regroup if you are surprised in the first instance trial. So does the fact that in a civil law system you may be preparing for only a few witnesses at a time, rather than all of the witnesses and evidence back to back at once. Since most of the time the court correctly understands the evidence and there are no big surprises, and since the court narrows the issues over the course of the proceeding by applying law to each new set of facts, the amount of effort going into trial preparation and presenting evidence overall in a civil law system is often considerably less than in a common law system and these savings can often make up for more common and more time consuming appeals in civil law systems at the second instance. In a civil law system, if the first instance court rules against you, but gets the case 90% right the first time around and no surprises come up in the trial, then you can proceed to a much narrower case in the second instance to get the 10% that the court got wrong the first time corrected without so many distractions and you have already seen your opponent's entire case, rather than having suffered an impossible to remedy fail. A second instance trial in a civil law system is somewhat analogous to a first trial following some motion practice that resolved many of the pending issues on dispositive motions in a common law system. Like the first instance court, the second instance court looks primarily to statutes and legal treatises for legal guidance with case law precedents taking only a secondary role that is not strictly binding except some rulings from the highest court. A third instance appeal in a civil law system is more or less comparable to a direct appeal in a common law system, where appellate issues are largely confined to disputes of law and the facts found by the second instance court (as well as the first instance court findings that were not disturbed on appeal to the second instance court) are taken as established (again, usually without a verbatim transcript based upon a written order of the second instance panel). This court often called a court of cassation (i.e. of ending a dispute) resolves disputed issues of law. Typically, a court of cassation or supreme court will have dozens or scores of judges who have subject matter specialties and hear cases only in smaller panels. None of these courts has a power of judicial review, which is typically reserved for a constitutional court that is a separate small panel court not made up only of career judges. In a civil law system, if the judge is found to have abused his or her discretion in the original trial in a manner that requires a retrial, another judge rehears the case. Common Law System Appeals In the common law civil litigation process very few issues can be resolved prior to trial unless the relevant facts are undisputed and often not even then if substantial discretion is involved in a final decision. In contrast, in a common law system, a single judge (often sitting with a jury of six to twelve jurors) decide facts in a trial from which a verbatim transcript is taken and reaches a verdict that can only be appealed if there is no evidence in the transcript and submitted exhibits that support a conclusion, or if there was a mistake of law or procedure (especially admission of evidence) in the proceedings that could have materially changed the outcome if decided correctly. There is no means by which factual errors or failure to respond to surprises can be remedied so preparation must consider every possibility no matter how remote. The trial is conducted all at once, typically in one to ten consecutive business days and all witnesses in the case must testify one after the other at this time. At trial, the judge carefully regulates what evidence is and is not permitted to be presented and instructs the jury regarding the law to apply to the facts and the issues for the jury to decide in its verdict. The trial verdict is final once the jury renders its verdict and appellate type issues raised with the original trial judge are rejected (or a retrial is granted on grounds similar to those upon which an appeal could be granted if a judge acknowledges making a serious mistake). If either side thinks that there was an error, there is a right to a direct appeal to a panel of three judges that considers only the verbatim transcript of the trial, the exhibits admitted into evidence at trial, and legal arguments (typically no more than about three or four per party bringing an appeal). If the court of appeals panel on direct appeal finds an error of law or an abuse of discretion or a factual finding not supported by any evidence in the transcript and admitted exhibits, it will reverse the trial court, otherwise it will affirm. Jury verdicts are quite hard to overturn on appeal because they are upheld if any non-crazy jury could have reached that result even if they probably just screwed up. In common law countries there are usually one or two more appeal available after a direct appeal (to a state supreme court and the U.S. Supreme Court in some cases), which strictly in the discretion of the state or U.S. Supreme Court with only a small percentage of cases even considered on this further appeal, and usually with just one or two novel or controversial issues of law raised at this point. Again, no new facts can be introduced or corrected on appeal. In common law countries, if a trial court decision is overturned, the new trial will almost always be remanded to the same judge, even if the original trial verdict is overturned because the original judge abused his or her discretion in the original trial.
Generally, a local county judge’s decision is not binding on the judgement of another judge unless it is that of an appellate division. The law of the case principle could be referred to as an argument if it would have been decided by another judge in the same case (some courtships work on a rotary basis with different judges sitting over a single case). This would mean that the court would give greater deference to that decision; however, applying the principle is a matter of administrative preference to save resources of the court. Whether or not the other judge would reconsider the matter would be within their discretion absent binding authority to the contrary as a “law of the case” is not binding. In fact, even if it would have been the same judge with the exact same facts deciding the matter in a final judgement, there wouldn’t be much to do. One could argue that deciding differently is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment which, if the judge fails to explain the different decision on the exact same facts may have a reasonable probability to get overturned provided the unconstitutionality finding was correct in the first place. If the matter was, in fact, unconstitutional, appeals may overturn a contrary judgement if the issue is brought up in the lower court and enters the court record. It may have some weight still to cite the decision of the other judge as the argument may be given more weight than if merely delivered as the argument of counsel.
Different courts have different practices, but I believe the general practice is for plaintiffs to use exhibit numbers, and for defendants to use exhibit letters. As with most procedural questions, the final decision belongs to the judge. The repetition in letters comes in when you get to the end of the alphabet. After you've used A-Z, you go to AA, BB, CC ... ZZ, then AAA, BBB, CCC, and so on.
A case can be &quot;dismissed&quot; at (most) any time (however, the further along in the process a case is, the less likely a judge will allow a case to be dismissed without very good reason). A case can be dismissed with or without &quot;prejudice&quot;, which in this legal context means essentially &quot;finality&quot;. A case dismissed with prejudice cannot be brought again, while a case dismissed without prejudice can be refiled. (Compare the criminal law concept of &quot;double jeopardy&quot;, though as phoog correctly notes, &quot;double jeopardy&quot; only applies in criminal trials, while prejudice can be applied in both civil and criminal courts). Many cases are dismissed without looking at the evidence (or even having the evidence admitted to the record); this is called &quot;summary judgement&quot; or &quot;judgement as a matter of law&quot;. There are generally three cases when this happens: First, if the prosecution or plaintiff (i.e. the party bringing accusations) has &quot;failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted&quot;, i.e. asked for something the court cannot grant. Second, is if the defendant can show, that even if everything alledged by the plaintiff is true, that the necessarily elements of the crime or offense have not been proven. Third, is if there are no facts in dispute, and only a disagreement on interpreting the law.
It is certainly possible for the same action to break multiple laws, and be chargeable as multiple crimes. For example, shooting and killing someone may be assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder all at the same time. For a different example a person who simply omits to file an income tax return may be guilty of both failure to file a required return, and failure to pay tax due, and in some cases failure to par required estimated tax due as well. For yet another example, driving well above the speed limit may be a violation of the speed limit law, and also careless driving, and possibly also reckless driving. In the first case the assault etc may be lesser included offenses in the charge of murder. That means that they are automatically available to a jury (or judge) trying the accused, who can convict on one of the lesser included charges if they do not convict on the primary count. For the more general case, I don't know of any special term for the situation. It is not usual to have law A which says "do not do X", and also law B which says "you must follow law A". There is no general principle against having such redundant laws, nor is there, in the US, any Constitutional rule against such laws. But legislatures do not normally bother to enact such redundant laws. Laws which will sometimes overlap in their coverage, but in some cases do not overlap are common.
The Supreme Court does not handle hypotheticals. The court has interpreted Article III Section 2 Clause 1 of the Constitution, the Case or Controversy Clause as a limit on the powers of the judicial branch. The courts have jurisdiction over various types of cases and controversies but only those listed in the Constitution. This limits courts to hearing actual cases and prevents them from issuing advisory opinions. Additionally, in order to bring a case, the plaintiff must have standing to bring the suit. You can't sue the government just because you don't like a law (well, you can, your suit will just be dismissed because it lacks standing). You have to show That you have been, or will imminently be, injured (injury-in-fact) That there is a direct correlation between that injury and the law (causation) And that a favorable court decision will redress the injury (redressability) As a practical matter, the courts are already overwhelmed by the number of actual cases that come up and the Supreme Court can only hear a tiny fraction of the cases they are asked to hear. If they added the ability to hear hypothetical cases as well, the court could easily be overwhelmed by Senators and Representatives asking them to weigh in on every remotely controversial bill or amendment before Congress or interest groups bringing cases for speculative grievances.
These questions are typically left to the discretion of the judge in whose courtroom the presentation is happening. It is very common to see these types of devices in trial courts, but they are much less common in appellate courts, and I doubt you'd ever see one in the United States Supreme Court, where the arguments are essentially limited to oral presentations.
Is it true that there has never been a single case It is tough to prove a negative. I am not going to completely parse the quote but please notice that the quote states "we couldn't find" and concludes that "it doesn't happen." Given these two pieces of information I do not conclude that there has never been a single case. Rather I conclude that the speaker in your quote could not find a case therefore he concluded that there has never been a single case. It's largely impossible to determine that there has never been a single such case. We can search published opinions but that barely scratches the surface of lawsuits that are filed. It is entirely possible that someone filed a suit which was quickly dismissed. The Act provides a defense, it does not bar lawsuits. Someone might get sick from food and not know where the food came from so they sue the provider. If this happens the provider may raise the Emerson Act as a defense and escape liability to the extent applicable. But again, we will never know because it's impossible to examine every lawsuit filed in this country.