Text 3 (С) The System of Courts in the United States

The judicial branch has the responsibility of judging the constitutionality of acts of law.

According to Article III of the Constitution "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish".

There are about 100 Federal courts throughout the country, final authority resting in the United States Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest tribunal in the United States. It includes a Chief Justice and eight associate justices. They are all appointed by the President and approved by the Senate.

Under the Constitution the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction (i.e., it is court in which proceedings may be brought in the first instance) in case affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls and cases in which a state is a party. In all other cases coming within the judicial power of the United States, the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is only appellate, and is subject to exceptions and regulations by Congress.

The Supreme Court cannot alter the Constitution. The Court's function is to intepret the Constitution, not to Alter or modify it.

The Supreme Court meets on the second Monday in October for a session which generally extends through to July.

The Supreme Court is made up of lawyers who had long and successful experience before they were appointed to the Court. Not all were judges or lawyers in private practice. A Supreme Court Justice may have been a senator, an Attorney General, a teacher in a law school, or even the administrator of an agency that acts like a court. The typical justice was probably appointed at about the age of fifty, and will live from twenty to forty years on the court. He is therefore likely to be some­what elderly, and also to have lived in close contact with the political world of the previous generation.

Besides the US Supreme Court there are various other Federal courts, including the district courts and (circuit) courts of appeals.

The Federal courts and the regula­ting agencies that act somewhat like courts, apply the law to particular cases; but they do far more than that. For the words of the written law cannot be all the law. New cases arise, and the law must deal with them. Sometimes Congress passes new laws to deal with new cases.

The Courts of Appeals were organized to relieve the Supreme Court of pressure resulting from accumulation of appellate cases. In general these courts have final jurisdiction over the great mass of litigation not involving constitutional questions. For example, parties from different states have their case heard in a high Federal Court without going to the Supreme Court. A United States Court of Appeals gen­erally comprises three judges. (The Chief Justice and associate justices of the Su­preme Court are authorized to assign additional circuit courtjudges to such courts as may need them).

A Court of Appeals accepts the facts sent up to it by the lower courts, and therefore does not need a jury. Its work is to decide on disputed questions of law. As a rule the Court of Appeals sits with three judges together on the bench. This court's principal duty is to protect the Supreme Court from routine cases of no political importance. Its decision may be so clear and well grounded that the Su­preme Court will refuse to go into the question further, in which case the Court of Appeals has stated the supreme law of the land, at least for the exact circumstances of that case.

The inferior courts in the federal system have somewhat less political importance, since their principal duty is to settle routine cases where no constitutional question is at stake. At the ground level are the District Courts with about two hundred district judgesscattered over the United States. These courts handle both civil and cases that come under the jurisdiction of the Federal laws. By the Constitution they are required to give a jury trial in all except civil cases involving less than twenty dollars.

ВАРИАНТ 1

1. Перепишите и письменно переведите следующие предложения, принимая во внимание, что инфинитив в функции определения и особенно Complex Object и Complex Subject часто соответствуют придаточным предложениям.

1. They wanted him to be acquitted 2. He seems to come soon. 3. He is said to have come to the city. 4. We heard Brown to be awarded with the first prise. 5. The witness happened to know about the crime. 6. She was prooved to be quilty 7. They consider themselves to be right.