This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on General jurisdiction is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
- This article concerns the term "general jurisdiction" as used in reference to subject matter jurisdiction. For information on the use of the term in reference to personal jurisdiction, see personal jurisdiction.
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007) |
 |
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
A court of general jurisdiction is one that has the authority to hear cases of all kinds - criminal, civil, family, probate, and so forth.
Courts of general jurisdiction in the United States
All federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Many U.S. States have divided their courts between criminal and civil, with some making further divisions, assigning probate, family law, and juvenile cases, for example, to specialized courts.
General jurisdiction and judicial immunity
One significant effect of the classification of a court is the liability that a judge from that court might face for stepping beyond the bounds of that court. Judges are able to claim judicial immunity for acts that are not completely beyond their jurisdiction. For example, if a probate judge were to sentence a person to jail, that judge would not have immunity and could be sued because a probate judge has no jurisdiction to effect a criminal sentence. However, a judge in a court of general jurisdiction who happened to be overseeing a probate case would be immune from suit for sending a party to jail, because handing down a criminal sentence is not completely beyond the jurisdiction of such a judge.
In the United States, this principle was established by the Supreme Court in Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978). The Court found in that case that an Indiana judge was immune from a suit brought by a young woman whom the judge had ordered to be sterilized, at the behest of the woman's mother. Because the Indiana court was a court of general jurisdiction, and no law of Indiana expressly prohibited the judge from issuing such an order, the Supreme Court found that the order was not completely beyond the jurisdiction of that judge.
See also
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 5 December 2008, at 02:37.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "General jurisdiction".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.