So here is a quick quiz. How many states do NOT have a court appeals in their judicial system?Students in my introduction to common law courses are by now familiar with the basic structure of court systems in the United States: trial court, appeals court, supreme court. As I mentioned, many states deviate from this basic structure in one way or another. For instance, the highest court in New York is not called Supreme Court but Court of Appeals, while one of the lower courts is called Supreme Court. A bit confusing. Wikipedia has collected a few more differences that exist between state court systems.
But a more substantial deviation from this basic structure is the absence of a Court of Appeals. In these states one finds a trial court and a Supreme Court with nothing in between. In some of these states losers in the trial court have the right to have their appeal heard by the Supreme Court!
The Las Vegas Sun recently published an editorial urging the Nevada Legislature to create a Court of Appeals in Nevada. Because Nevada is a state where one has an appeal as of right to the Supreme Court, the system is inefficient with a bottleneck of cases at the top of the pyramid, at least so argues the Sun.
So back to my question. How many states do not have an intermediate court? The answer: 10! Wow. More on the various differences between the state systems regarding appeals can be found here.
