{{Globalize, article, USA, 2name=the United States, date=December 2010 A

court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...

of general jurisdiction is a court with authority to hear cases of all kinds – criminal,

civil Civil may refer to: *Civic virtue, or civility *Civil action, or lawsuit * Civil affairs *Civil and political rights *Civil disobedience *Civil engineering *Civil (journalism), a platform for independent journalism *Civilian, someone not a membe ...

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

, probate, and so forth.

United States

All federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Many

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

s have divided their courts between criminal and civil, with some making further divisions, assigning probate,

family law Family law (also called matrimonial law or the law of domestic relations) is an area of the law that deals with family matters and domestic relations. Overview Subjects that commonly fall under a nation's body of family law include: * Marriage ...

, and juvenile cases, for example, to specialized courts.

General jurisdiction and judicial immunity

One significant effect of the classification of a court is the liability that a judge from that court might face for stepping beyond the bounds of that court. Judges are able to claim

judicial immunity Judicial immunity is a form of sovereign immunity, which protects judges and others employed by the judiciary from liability resulting from their judicial actions. Though judges have immunity from lawsuit, in constitutional democracies judicial m ...

for acts that are not completely beyond their jurisdiction. For example, if a probate judge were to sentence a person to jail, that judge would not have immunity and could be sued because a probate judge has no jurisdiction to effect a criminal sentence. However, a judge in a court of general jurisdiction who happened to be overseeing a probate case ''would'' be immune from suit for sending a party to jail, because handing down a criminal sentence is not completely beyond the jurisdiction of such a judge. In the United States, this principle was established by the Supreme Court in ''

Stump v. Sparkman ''Stump v. Sparkman'', 435 U.S. 349 (1978), is the leading United States Supreme Court decision on judicial immunity. It involved an Indiana judge who was sued by a young woman who had been sterilized without her knowledge as a minor in accorda ...

'', 435 U.S. 349 (1978). The Court found in that case that an

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

judge was immune from a suit brought by a young woman whom the judge had ordered to be sterilized, at the behest of the woman's mother. Because the Indiana court was a court of general jurisdiction, and no law of Indiana expressly prohibited the judge from issuing such an order, the Supreme Court found that the order was not completely beyond the jurisdiction of that judge.

United States

General jurisdiction and judicial immunity

See also