Chapter 1
If a State agrees to participate in a proceeding, it is obligated to comply with the Court’s decision. Sometimes termed "courts of first instance", trial courts have varying original jurisdiction. Trial courts may conduct trials with juries as the finders of fact or trials in which judges act as both finders of fact and finders of law . Juries are less common in court systems outside the Anglo-American common law tradition. Courts are not naturally and universally endowed with legitimacy; rather, a sense of legitimacy is accrued and built over time. Throughout the world, the decisions of courts have often been ignored or violently opposed. The qualifications for and mode of appointment of judges, the age of retirement, the grounds and procedure for removal and the terms and conditions of service of judges are elaborately prescribed. The primary function of any court system—to help keep domestic peace—is so obvious that it is rarely considered or mentioned. If no agency wer...