ABA Family Legal Guide

How the Legal System Works

The Structure of the Court System

State and Federal Courts

What sorts of cases do state courts decide?

The state courts handle the vast majority--over 98 percent--of all litigation today. Forty-five states have two or more levels of trial courts--special jurisdiction courts with jurisdiction limited to specific types of cases, and general jurisdiction courts with jurisdiction over all other cases.

Special, or limited, jurisdiction courts have specific names that may vary from state to state, such as district, mayor's, city, justice, justice of the peace, magistrate, county, municipal, or police courts. They hear relatively minor civil and criminal disputes, and are typically dominated by traffic cases. They often have exclusive jurisdiction over juvenile cases.

Courts of general jurisdiction hear most of the serious criminal and civil cases and in addition are sometimes subdivided into subject areas such as domestic relations and state and local tax. These courts have different names in different states (see "What's in a Name"). Five states now have unified trial courts, in which all types of cases are heard.

By contrast, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reports that annually the U.S. district courts receive well under half a million cases: 80 percent civil and 20 percent criminal. Among the types of civil suits filed in the federal courts are civil rights actions, patent infringement cases, prisoner petitions, and Social Security cases. The federal criminal cases filed include tax fraud, robbery, forgery and counterfeiting, and drug offenses, which are among the largest category of cases. Bankruptcy courts deal with the largest number of federal cases, with about 1.5 million cases filed each year.

The number of cases filed in federal courts is smaller, but most cases are more complex than the majority of cases filed in state court.