How complete is the circle of points in which the state touches the life of the American citizen, we may see in the fact that our state courts make a complete judiciary system, from top to bottom independent of the federal courts.[15] An appeal may be carried from a state court to a federal court in cases which are found to involve points of federal law, or in suits arising between citizens of different states, or where foreign ambassadors are concerned.  Except for such cases the state courts make up a complete judiciary world of their own, quite outside the sphere of the United States courts.

[Footnote 15:  Independence of the state courts.]

[Sidenote:  Constitution of the state courts.] We have already had something to say about courts in connection with those primitive areas for the administration of justice, the hundred and the county.  In our states there are generally four grades of courts.  There are, first, the justices of the peace , with jurisdiction over “petty police offences and civil suits for trifling sums.”  They also conduct preliminary hearings in cases where persons are accused of serious crimes, and when the evidence seems to warrant it they may commit the accused person for trial before a higher court.  The mayor’s court in a city usually has jurisdiction similar to that of justices of the peace.  Secondly, there are county and municipal courts, which hear appeals from justices of the peace and from mayor’s courts, and have original jurisdiction over a more important grade of civil and criminal cases.  Thirdly, there are superior courts, having original jurisdiction over the most important cases and over wider of the state areas of country, so that they do not confine their sessions to one place, but move about from place to place, like the English justices in eyre.  Cases are carried up, on appeal, from the lower to the superior court.  Fourthly, there is in every state a supreme court, which generally has no original jurisdiction, but only hears appeals from the decisions of the other courts.  In New York there is a “supremest” court, styled the court of appeals, which has the power of revising sundry judgments of the supreme court; and there is something similar in New Jersey, Illinois, Kentucky, and Louisiana.[16]

[Footnote 16:  Wilson.  The State, pp. 509-513.]

[Sidenote:  Elective and appointive judges.] In the thirteen colonies the judges were appointed by the governor, with or without the consent of the council, and they held office during life or good behaviour.  Among the changes made in our state constitutions since the Revolution, there have been few more important than those which have affected the position of the judges.  In most of the states they are now elected by the people for a term of years, sometimes as short as two years.  There is a growing feeling that this change was a mistake.  It seems to have lowered the general character of the judiciary.