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:''This article discusses the state supreme courts in the United States. See Australian court hierarchy for the counterparts in Australian states. See Supreme court for the highest court in a country.'' 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). 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). ==Appellate jurisdiction== Under American federalism, the interpretation of a state supreme court on a matter of state law is normally final and binding and must be accepted in both state and federal courts. Federal courts may overrule a state court only when there is a federal question, which is to say, a specific issue (such as consistency with the Federal Constitution) that gives rise to federal jurisdiction. Federal appellate review of state supreme court rulings on such 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.〔''Smith v. Robbins'', 528 U.S. 259, 270 n.5 (2000) ("()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").〕 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 is the case, for example, in Nevada. Such judicial systems are usually very congested.〔Valerie Miller, "Judges renew their call for appeals court," ''Las Vegas Business Press'' 19, no. 3 (January 21, 2002): 1.〕 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,"〔G. Alan Tarr, ''Judicial Process and Judicial Policymaking'', 6th ed. (Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2012), 37 and 139. 〕 which means their primary task is to decide whether the record reflects that the trial court correctly applied existing law. For certain limited categories of cases, the state supreme court still operates under mandatory review, usually with regard to cases involving the interpretation of the state constitution or capital punishment. But for the vast majority, the state supreme court possesses the discretion to grant ''certiorari'' (known as ''review'' in states that discourage the use of Latin). These cases usually pertain to issues which different appellate courts within its jurisdiction have decided differently, or highly controversial cases involving a completely new legal issue never seen in that state. In other words, once the state supreme court is able to offload the tedious burden of error correction to intermediate courts, it can then focus on the long-term task (i.e., a policymaking role) of developing a coherent body of case law for the people of its state. Iowa and Oklahoma have a unique procedure for appeals. In those states, ''all'' appeals are filed with the appropriate Supreme Court (Iowa has a single Supreme Court, while Oklahoma has separate civil and criminal Supreme Courts) which then keeps all cases of first impression for itself to decide. It forwards the remaining caseswhich deal with points of law it has already addressedto the intermediate Court of Appeals. Notably, the Supreme Court of Virginia operates under discretionary review for nearly all cases, but the intermediate Court of Appeals of Virginia hears appeals as a matter of right only in family and administrative cases. The result is that there is ''no'' first appeal of right for the vast majority of civil and criminal cases in that state. Appellants are still free to petition for review, of course, but such petitions are subject to severe length constraints (6,125 words or 35 pages in Virginia) and necessarily are more narrowly targeted than a long opening appellate brief to an intermediate appellate court (by way of contrast, an opening brief to a California intermediate appellate court can run up to 14,000 words). In turn, the vast majority of decisions of Virginia circuit courts in civil and criminal cases are thereby insulated from appellate review on the merits. New Hampshire and West Virginia formerly also provided only discretionary review for nearly all cases even though they had no intermediate appellate court. Both states gradually recognized that even if this arrangement did not offend the federal Constitution, it was unduly harsh for hapless appellants, and transitioned to mandatory review, respectively, in 2004〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/ )〕 and 2010.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.courtswv.gov/legal-community/court-rules/appellate-procedure/Part-III.html )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「State supreme court」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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