The Alaska Court of Appeals is an intermediate court of appeals for criminal cases in the

State State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

's judicial department ( Alaska Court System), created in 1980 by the

Alaska Legislature The Alaska Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a bicameral institution consisting of the 40-member Alaska House of Representatives (lower house) and the 20-member Alaska Senate (upper house). There are 40 Ho ...

as an additional

appellate court A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

to lessen the burden on the

Alaska Supreme Court The Alaska Supreme Court is the state supreme court for the U.S. state of Alaska. Its decisions are binding on all other Alaska state courts, and the only court its decisions may be appealed to is the Supreme Court of the United States. The Alas ...

. The

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 appeals consists of a chief judge and three associate judges, who are all appointed by the

governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

of Alaska (see

List of governors of Alaska The governor of Alaska ( Iñupiaq: ''Alaaskam kavanaa'') is the head of government of Alaska. The governor is the chief executive of the state and is the holder of the highest office in the executive branch of the government as well as being the ...

) and face judicial retention

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative ...

every eight years; the chief judge of the court of appeals is selected from among the four by the chief justice of the supreme court to serve a two-year term. The court of

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 ...

hears

oral argument Oral arguments are spoken presentations to a judge or appellate court by a lawyer (or parties when representing themselves) of the legal reasons why they should prevail. Oral argument at the appellate level accompanies written briefs, which also a ...

from lower state

trial court A trial court or court of first instance is a court having original jurisdiction, in which trials take place. Appeals from the decisions of trial courts are usually made by higher courts with the power of appellate review (appellate courts). Mos ...

s on a regular basis in Anchorage.

Appointment and composition

All Alaska state court judges are selected in accordance with the Missouri Plan. The governor of Alaska appoints a court of appeals judge from a list of qualified candidates submitted by the Alaska Judicial Council. To be eligible for appointment, a person must be a citizen of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and a resident of Alaska for five years prior to appointment. A court of appeals judge must be licensed to practice law in Alaska at the time of appointment and must have engaged in the active practice of law for eight years. The appointed judge must be approved by the voters on a nonpartisan ballot at the first statewide general election held more than three years after appointment; thereafter, each court of appeals judge must participate in another retention election every eight years.

Current judges

The members of Alaskan Court of Appeals, by order of seniority, include:

Jurisdiction

The court of appeals has

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...

to hear appeals from judgments in criminal cases and certain other quasi-criminal cases in which a minor is accused of committing a crime ( juvenile delinquency cases), cases in which

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ers are challenging the legality of their confinement (

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

and post-conviction relief matters), and cases involving

probation Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incarceration), such ...

and

parole Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or ...

decisions. Also, a defendant in a criminal case who appeals from district court to superior court can ask the court of appeals to review the resulting decision of the superior court, but the court of appeals may, in its discretion, refuse to hear the appeal. The court of appeals' jurisdiction is therefore over criminal and quasi-criminal matters rather than civil matters; it was created in 1980 to take the burden of these matters from the supreme court, which is therefore able to concentrate on civil matters. However, unlike the Supreme Court of the United States, the Alaska Supreme Court is required to hear appeals in civil cases in the first (and usually last) instance and is not able to exercise its discretion whether to consider appeals previously heard by other appellate courts. Although granting both civil and criminal jurisdiction to the new court of appeals (freeing the supreme court to be purely an appellate court of last resort rather than first instance) had been considered by some proponents in 1980, it was not then believed that the Alaska legislature would be amenable to creating such a court.

Decisions

The court of appeals usually announces its decisions of cases by issuing memorandum opinions and judgments (MO&Js) and orders summarily ruling on the merits of cases or dismissing them, as well as opinions for official publication (in

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, the Pacific Reporter and the Alaska Reporter). Although the MO&Js and most orders are not published, the MO&Js are available for public inspection at the Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau offices of the clerk of the appellate courts, and the orders are filed in the clerk's Anchorage office. Current MO&Js are also available on the Alaska Court System

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. Nevertheless, MO&Js are binding only upon the parties and stare decisis does not apply.

References

External links