Why is Oklahoma divided into three districts? The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit hears appeals from the district courts of the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. With one exception, each state is a single federal district, for example the District of Colorado. Oklahoma, however, is divided into an Eastern, a Northern, and a Western district. Why? Are the federal courts of Oklahoma busier than those of the other states? The obvious answer is population, but Colorado is substantially more populous than Oklahoma. Nor is the population of Oklahoma more dispersed than, say, that of Kansas. How did this happen? Is there a reason for it?
Oklahoma Territory and The Indian Territories were set on the road to statehood by the Oklahoma Enabling Act: §13 of that act stipulated that two judicial districts would be created, where The Indian Territories would be the Eastern District and Oklahoma Territory would be the Western district. This is an ancient-enough political act that we can't say why Congress decided to give the constituent parts separate courts, however legal issues regarding tribes are different from other aspects of federal law, so it would be sensible to have a specialized district for special cases. In 1925, Congress reorganized the two districts into three. I think that is as far as one can go with the legal aspect of the question, but there may be a historical political explanation
No The case was dismissed on procedural reasons. Like this. Well, perhaps not so pedantic but there are things that have to happen before the Supreme Court can get involved and they haven’t. For example, the Supreme Court only has original jurisdiction in a limited classes of case; if this isn’t one of those (and it isn’t) it has to be heard in a court that does and then get appealed up the chain. When they have, the court will make a decision on the merits.
if necessary it is possible to simplify it to USA vs EU The European Union is by no means a homogeneous area of law. I will assume france because it is the one I am most familiar with, but bear in mind that much of what follows might not apply to Spain/Germany/etc. The USA is a federal state. In particular, Louisiana law is heavily influenced by civil law for historical reasons. Other states and federal law do, however, follow more or less the same general principles. in common law there is the idea of a precedent, while in civil law not The first part is true. Common law usually hold the principle of stare decisis according to which precedents are binding. That means that the holding of a court binds the same court to rule the same way on similar matters raised later. I would note, however, that courts can be... let’s say &quot;creative&quot;... in finding ways to differentiate the case at hand from the previous one, when the judge is motivated to do so. The latter part is false, or at least, exaggerated. It is true that courts in civil law are not bound by previous holdings; an appeal that raises as its only argument &quot;the court’s decision in my case was different from that in another case without offering any differentiation&quot; would be rejected. However, there is the concept of jurisprudence constante where repeated precedent is highly persuasive. In practice, even simple precedent is persuasive. Furthermore, lower courts are bound by the holdings of higher courts, both in civil law and common law jurisdictions. (That’s more or less the meaning of &quot;higher court&quot;.) in common law a judge plays a role of a person evidence at a court is provided to, while in civil law a judge tries to investigate too in addition That is a distinction between the inquisitorial and adversarial systems. The distinction does not exactly map to the civil/common law systems, but in practice the criminal part of civil law systems is often inquisitorial whereas common law systems are often adversarial. I will first note that the &quot;inquisitorial&quot; part where the judge conducts investigations is vastly overblown. That only occurs in complex cases that require extended investigations with more coercitive powers (for instance seizing documents etc.) Wikipedia says: In 2005, there were 1.1 million criminal rulings in France, while only 33,000 new cases were investigated by judges.[5] The vast majority of cases are therefore investigated directly by law enforcement agencies under the supervision of [the equivalent of district attorneys]. The numbers sound plausible to me, but here’s the ref it gives if you want to check (which I did not bother to do). The most visible part of the distinction is the way witnesses at trial are handled. In an adversarial system, the parties will ask to cite certain witnesses. There are pre-trial motions to exclude certain witnesses for certain reasons, but parties have a wide latitude of which witnesses they want to call. Each witness will come labelled as to which party asked for its appearance. At trial, the witness will be asked questions by the party who called them (direct examination), which will usually take a long time and include nondisputed background information (who are you, for how long have you worked with the defendant, etc.). Then, the opposing party will ask questions (cross-examination), emphasizing points that cast doubt on the witness’s reliability (because they are lying, because they do not remember well, etc.) or on the other parties’ narrative (highlighting details that were conveniently &quot;missed&quot; in direct examination). In an inquisitorial system, witnesses are chosen by the judge. Parties can ask to have witnesses added to the list, but the list does not come with labels that X is coming from the prosecution, Y from the defense. When a witness is called, the judge will ask most of the questions at the start, before giving the floor to the parties. Roughly speaking, the judge does the direct examination, and parties do a cross-examination afterwards. Note that in many cases the parties will ask few or no questions - high-profile cases that you read about in the media are abnormal in that respect. In particular, an inquisitorial-system court maintains a list of expert witnesses, which are called when technical points are required. That expert is paid by the court, not by the parties (however, when one party requests an expertise and the other party opposes it, the requesting party has to pay the cost upfront - they will shift it to the other party if they win the case). That is very different to the adversarial system of having each party introduce testimony by an expert they commissioned and paid. distance between public law and private law is smaller in common law legal system I am not sure I understand that question. It is true that &quot;private&quot; (tort) law operates in an adversarial system both in civil-law and common-law. Therefore, one could argue that the distance between civil-law’s criminal system (inquisitorial) and tort system (adversarial) is higher than between common-law’s criminal and tort systems (both adversarial). However, that is in my view a highly artificial distinction. The distance between practice areas within a single (common law or civil law) jurisdiction is large in any case. You would not want a lawyer specialized in drug-dealing cases to take your case about sexual harassment or unlawful dismissal, and vice-versa, in any jurisdiction.
I'd imagine that testimony from the defendant is rare enough that in the majority of cases, prosecutors do not meaningfully prepare for a cross examination. To the extent they do, I'd expect the preparation is similar to that for basically any other witness. So I wouldn't expect complicated flowcharts, because the general rule at trial is that you only ask questions whose answers are both known and helpful. So if I need to place the defendant at the OK Corral at 3 p.m., I'm only going to ask him where he was at 3 p.m. if I have evidence showing that fact is true -- maybe he gave a written statement to the sheriff, maybe he posed for a daguerrotype, whatever. I expect him to deny it, so I don't ask the question unless I have evidence more convincing than his denial. In this way, a defendant -- like any hostile witness -- is used less to provide any facts of their own, but rather as an involuntary narrator of my own story, authenticating evidence and validating the facts consistent with my theory of the case.
It would not prohibit Colorado from passing the law, but it could prohibit implementing the law. SCOTUS rulings (Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486; Term Limits, 514 U.S. 779) establish that neither Congress nor the States can require additional qualifications of federal candidates beyond those listed in the Constitution. The relevant question is whether a law imposes an additional &quot;qualification&quot; on a candidate for president. Every state imposes at least one requirement on a person seeking to be a candidate on the ballot in a state: they must somehow &quot;register&quot; as a candidate. So the Qualifications Clause is not interpreted to mean &quot;anybody can run for president as long as age and natural-born&quot;. The Anderson-Burdick doctrine allows certain kinds of requirements to be imposed on candidates, namely those that relate to a state's interest on properly managing elections. A no-felon law would clearly go way beyond the accepted state interest (regarding management of elections) reflected in Anderson-Burdick, and would be found to be as unconstitutional as requiring a candidate for president to have a law degree, or prohibiting a candidate from having a law degree.
Probably not Maryland gave consent by ceding the land that became DC back when DC was first formed. Virginia had originally ceded a matching piece of land, which would have made the district a neat square 10 miles by 10 miles. Decades later, the Virginia General Assembly voted (in February 1846) to request the return of Alexandria in a process known as retrocession. On July 9, 1846, Congress voted to return all the area that had been ceded by Virginia. Since then, the district has consisted only of the land originally ceded by Maryland. When Article IV Section 3 says &quot;by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states&quot; it means by joining two states into one new one, or by cutting off parts of two of more states and making them a state -- doing either of those requires the consent of the states involved, but not an amendment. Article I Section 8 could be satisfied by creating a smaller district, perhaps just the Mall and the public buildings surrounding it, including the White House and the Capitol, but no residential areas. In any case nothing in Article I Section 8 mandates the creation or retention of a Federal district. It could be argued that making DC a state would require the consent of Maryland, which once included that land. Or it could be argued that Maryland's original cession left it with no further authority over that land (I favor the latter view). But no consent of Virginia would be needed, because none of its original land is included in the current district. In any case, Article IV Section 3 seems to give Congress this power, with no need for an amendment, only possibly for Maryland approval. So it appears that the primary body that would have to approve statehood for DC would be Congress. Whether approval from Maryland would also be needed is unclear -- probably not. No other body would need to approve. However, there is no case law on the matter, and such a move might well be challenged by those who would not want DC to elect two senators.
The other answer is incorrect. In fact, the question you're asking turns on the meaning of the phrase &quot;the whole number of electors appointed.&quot; This could be interpreted either way, and as far as I know this ambiguity has never been considered by a court or by congress. It would only matter under the following conditions: Some states appoint fewer electors than the number to which they are entitled. The candidate with the greatest number of votes has more votes than half the number of electors actually appointed, but less than or equal to half the number of electors that should have been appointed. One way to look at this ambiguity is that it depends on how you parse the structure of the amendment. It could be either: a majority of (the whole number of electors) (appointed) a majority of the whole number of (electors appointed) In the first case, &quot;appoint&quot; refers to the sentence in Article 2 that specifies, determines, or &quot;appoints&quot; the number of electors. This reading is supported, for example, by the first definition of appoint at Merriam-Webster online, which is to fix or set officially, as in &quot;to appoint a trial date.&quot; However, if you look at Article 2, it says Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. Here, appoint is used in its second sense, to name officially. This suggests that a failure by any state to appoint any elector to which it is entitled reduces &quot;the whole number of electors appointed&quot; because some available places in the Electoral College have not had anyone appointed to fill them. I favor the second interpretation, but I suspect that if the conditions outlined above actually did arise, Congress would choose the politically expedient interpretation. That is, if the candidate with the most votes was of the party in control of Congress, they would take the second interpretation, and if that candidate of the other party, they would take the first. I further suspect that the courts would not get involved.
As I understand it one of Scotus jobs is to mediate inter-state litigation. Did this happen with equal regularity over the years or was this something that happened mainly when the union was new? You are right the Supreme Court of the United States is the venue for state vs. state disputes. Though I would be careful to differentiate &quot;inter-state&quot; litigation from &quot;stave vs. state&quot; litigation. These disputes did happen regularly over the years yes, but with differing success as the strength of the Federal Government and Supreme Court increased*. In general state v. state cases are not too common, and generally deal with issues such as land and border disputes or questions. *(See as a partial reference this video where when NJ sued NY over a land dispute, NY effectively ignored the Court/ the Court didn't hear the case in 1832. Whereas in the 1990s NY did not ignore it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgZ1f4ACZBQ) For background the relevant provisions of the Constitution and statute are as follow: U.S. Const. Article III: Sec 2: In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii 28 USC Sec. 1251 (a)The Supreme Court shall have original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States. (b)The Supreme Court shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction of: (1)All actions or proceedings to which ambassadors, other public ministers, &gt; consuls, or vice consuls of foreign states are parties; (2)All controversies between the United States and a State; (3)All actions or proceedings by a State against the citizens of another State or against aliens. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1251 For a recent/ current state v. state case see Mississippi v. Tennessee: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22o143.html concerning territorial matters/ water rights. Is it therefore at least in theory possible for two states to have contrary laws and scotus be forced to make a value judgment contrary to state law to resolve some dispute? Generally no, unless the state law is impermissible under the United States Constitution or otherwise preempted by federal law for example. But the Supreme Court wouldn't really rule on &quot;contrary&quot; state laws, most cases are concerning federal laws or land matters. Also, unless there is a matter of Federal Law (&quot;federal question&quot;) or the state v state controversy under Article III the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction to rule on state matters (again unless a &quot;federal question&quot; is involved). Can scotus decide not to hear inter-state litigation in the same way it often does with constitutional matters or are they forced to mediate because there is no other way to settle such matters? Yes, they can choose not to hear state vs. state cases. Rule 17 of the Supreme Court Rules regards &quot;Procedure in Original Action&quot; https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/supct/rule_17 in which the Court &quot;Court thereafter may grant or deny the motion, set it for oral argument, direct that additional documents be filed, or require that other proceedings be conducted.&quot; Though, and I will note for completeness in answering your question, some current Justices believe it is not discretionary. See below: 155, ORIG. TEXAS V. PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL. The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot. Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins: In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. See Arizona v. California, 589 U. S. ___ (Feb. 24, 2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting). I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue. https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121120zr_p860.pdf