about the federal court system. There's a couple of points I want to make before

we begin talking about the system more specifically. The first point is this:

we are going to be using a lot of terms you probably have never heard before, so

don't be stressed about that. Don't be freaked out about it. Just understand

that there's gonna be a lot of new terms, so this is what I call a "term heavy"

discussion, and I will repeat those terms, and I will do my best to explain them, and

I'll do my job as best I can. So that's point number one. Point number two is

that we're going to be talking about the federal court system. Each state,

including California, has a separate court system, and most of the

interactions that we have are with state court systems, not the federal court

system. So for example, most of the time if you get called up to serve on a jury,

it'll be at a state court. Most of the time any legal action that takes place, any

type of criminal trials that take place, usually the

vast majority of those take place at the state level. So going back to one of our

earlier discussions -- this one about federalism: if you remember, there are

powers called "concurrent powers," and those are powers that both the federal

government and the states have

at the same time. Well the power to create a court system is one of those

concurrent powers, so there's a federal court system and then separate and

concurrently, each state, including California, has its own court system

ok? So the federal court system is what we call a three tier system or three

level system. At the bottom level... there are federal district courts,

and then the next level up...there are circuit courts

also known as federal courts of appeals, and you'll hear me use those words those

terms interchangeably, so understand that they mean the same thing.

Circuit courts and federal courts of appeals mean the same thing. That's the

second level or the second tier of the federal court system, and then at the top

is the United States Supreme Court; there's only one of those! So the next

video is going to be dealing exclusively with federal district courts.