The Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988 (, codified at ) is an

act of Congress An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities (called Public and private bills, private laws), or to the general public (Public and private bills, public laws). For a Bill (law) ...

that eliminated

appeals In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...

as of right from state court decisions to the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

. After the Act took effect, in most cases, the only avenue by which a litigant could obtain review of most lower court decisions was through the writ of

certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...

, which was granted at the discretion of the Supreme Court, rather than available to the litigant as a matter of right. The Act amended 28 U.S.C. § 1257 to eliminate the right of appeal to the Supreme Court from certain state-court judgments. Prior to the enactment of the Act, if the highest state court had found either a federal statute or treaty to be invalid or a state statute not to be invalid in the face of federal law, the party that had not prevailed had had the right to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. After the enactment of the Act, the only appeal as of right to the Supreme Court that still exists, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253, are cases appealing "an interlocutory or permanent injunction in any civil action, suit or proceeding required by any Act of Congress to be heard and determined by a district court of three judges."

Textual changes

Prior to the enactment of the Act, § 1257 read as follows: The Act removed subsections (1) and (2), which had provided for the right of appeal, struck "appeal" from the section catchline, and reorganized the remaining text:

References

External links

, TOM:/bss/d100query.html Pub. L. 100-352 information
thomas.gov * {{UnitedStatesCode, 28, 1257 from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University 1988 in law 1988 in the United States History of the Supreme Court of the United States 100th United States Congress United States federal judiciary legislation

Textual changes

See also

References

External links