May 29, 2019 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
The Third Branch of the Government
So was the case with Socrates who viewed
democracy with great suspicion as it meant handing over the entire nation to
the unruly masses most of them being poorly read, having very limited awareness
of happenings around them and having an average (or perhaps even lower than
that) intellectual and analytical prowess.
Finally when the constitution was framed
the framers gave only a general outline of the judiciary saying that the
federal judicial power would be vested in “one Supreme Court, and in such
inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
Thus in the constitution the exact powers
and prerogatives of the Supreme Court was left undefined.
Even the system and organization of the
judiciary which would be the “third branch” was very much left undefined
leaving it for the Congress to create the system as and how required.
United States which has a federal system of
government has both a federal Supreme Court which is called the Supreme Court
of the United States and supreme court for each state such as the Supreme Court
of Nevada.
While the state Supreme Court is fairly
independent of the federal one but for the fact that the federal Constitution
overrides everything else which includes the state laws.
This means that the state Supreme Court
must take into account the federal Constitution and thereby the doctrine of
stare decisis (Latin phrase which means, “Let the Decision Stand”) holds true
visa-a-vis federal Supreme Court.
The precedent set by the federal Supreme
Court through its decisions thus reigns supreme and necessarily becomes a
precedent for all other courts of the land to follow.
It is definitely not so in India where the
High Court and its benches in the state are the highest appellate courts of the
state with only once central Supreme Court in the capital.
Today in the United states the trial court
for both civil and criminal cases are the district courts and the entire
country for the purpose of federal judicial system has been divided into 94
federal judicial districts which do not obey the state boundaries particularly
when it comes to a large state.
But each state and the District of Columbia
and Puerto Rico have in them at least one federal judicial district.
For instance the state of California has
four federal judicial districts that are called Northern, Eastern, Central and
Southern and thereby a matter arising in San Francisco would be tried at the
Northern federal district court and a legal dispute in Irvine would be triable
at the Central federal district court.
It must be also told that Northern Federal
District Court is not one but four holding trials in courts located at Eureka,
Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.
Each court requires judges, clerks, and an
array of supporting staff each well paid so that there is no rampant corruption
that would vitiate the very essence of justice like so commonly happens in
those of third-world countries where every public servant including the judges
are highly and rather comfortably susceptible to the lure of bribes that
sabotages their duties creating an environment of impunity in the minds of
criminals.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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