Lessons · Law foundations · trial courts and appeal courts
The court that hears the evidence, and the court that reads the record
A trial court hears witnesses and decides what happened; an appeal court hears no witnesses and decides whether the trial court got the law right on the record it made.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
A client who lost a trial asks whether the appeal will let their sister finally tell her side. The honest answer, before any question of merit, is that an appeal court does not take testimony at all, and a paralegal who does not know that will promise something the system cannot deliver.
How to think about it
Ask what the court is being given. Witnesses and exhibits mean a trial court. Briefs and a transcript mean an appeal court, and the facts are already fixed by the time they arrive.
Worked example
Trial court: witnesses, exhibits, and a decision about what happened.The only place in the system where evidence is taken and facts are found.
The record: the transcript, the exhibits and the papers filed.What the trial produced. The appeal court reads this and nothing beyond it.
Appeal court: the record, the written briefs, and argument about the law.No witnesses are called and no exhibits are handed up for the first time.
What an appeal court can do: affirm, reverse, or send it back to the trial court.Sending it back is called a remand, and it means the trial court does something again, correctly.
Your turn
Say what an appeal court will not take, however important it looks.
What an appeal court does not take: evidence
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Calling the appeal a second trial. It is a review of one trial, on a record that closed the day the trial ended, which is why what goes into the record matters so much while there is still time to put it there.