Supreme court

The supreme court in some countries, provinces, and states, is the highest court in that jurisdiction and functions as a court of last resort whose rulings cannot be appealed. In the United States, for example, there is a federal Supreme Court as well as supreme courts within most of the states. However, some jurisdictions do not use the phrase "Supreme Court" in naming their highest courts, as described below.

Related Topics:
United States - Supreme Court - Jurisdiction

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Although some countries and subordinate states follow the American model of having a supreme court that interprets that jurisdiction's constitution, most (including all of the formerly communist Central and Eastern European nations except Estonia) follow the Austrian model of a separate constitutional court (first developed in the Austrian Constitution of 1920).

Related Topics:
American - Jurisdiction - Constitution - Communist - Central - Eastern - European - Estonia - Austria - Constitutional court - Austrian Constitution - 1920

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Many higher courts create through their decisions case law applicable within their respective jurisdictions or interpret codal provisions in civil-law countries to maintain a uniform interpretation:

Related Topics:
Case law - Codal - Civil-law

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• Most common-law nations have the doctrine of stare decisis in which the rulings (decisions) of higher courts constitute binding precedent upon courts of equal or lower status within their jurisdiction.
• Most civil-law nations do not have the official doctrine of stare decisis and hence the rulings of the supreme court are usually not binding outside the immediate case in question. However, in practice, the precedent, or jurisprudence, expressed by those courts is often extremely strong. Some exceptions such as Spain are discussed below.
 
Supreme court: Common-law jurisdictions ►