As a judge, you will be in charge of your courtroom.
People come in the courtroom because they have a case. Some cases are the criminal case, which means that they are accused of committing a crime, or a civil case, which is when someone has a disagreement about something, and they want the judge to figure out who is right.
A complaint is a piece of paper containing info about everything that the other side did wrong.
A jury is a group of people who listens to everything happening in the trial and then they say who wins.
On the trial, the two lawyers will tell the jury what happened on their side and evidence of why.
A lawyer could say objection and disagree with the rules, but the judge can sustain objections and overrule objections. Sustain objection means that the judge agrees that the objection is correct. Overruling objections means that the judge disagrees with the objection.
After the lawyers tell the jury what happened, then the jury will decide which side is guilty. He will also have to decide whether anyone broke the law. Then the judge tells the jury what the law is, so the jury won’t make a mistake. The jury’s decision is called a verdict, and it is read out loud in the courtroom. Then the trial is over.
Or, the loser can go up a court to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals is a higher court than the trial court. The Court of Appeals only takes people that have been through a trial and gotten a verdict.
Usually, the person has to argue that the verdict was wrong, and the judge there will have to decide if a mistake was made in the trial court. There are no juries in the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals has three judges. They will decide the appeal. If all three of the judges agree, then the judge will affirm the trial court’s decision by leaving it alone. If two judges agree, and one disagrees, then the disagreeing judge is called a dissenting judge. The majority of the judges win. For example, if there are two dissenting judges and one agreeing judge, then the trial court was correct and the person is still guilty. Then they can go to a higher court. On the other hand, if they all agree that there was a mistake made in the trial court, then the person isn’t guilty.
The highest court in the US is called the Supreme Court, made up of nine Supreme Court Justices. Justices are judges in the Supreme Court. Each Supreme Court Justice is picked by the President and then voted on by the Senate. Since the Supreme Court is so high, most of the people who get there aren’t let in. When Justices make a decision, then it means that it is called a Supreme Law in the Land, and it will also affect other people with similar problems in the US. So the Supreme Court has a lot of responsibility.