For many years, I organized trips for foreign-exchange students attending Goffstown High School to introduce them to our United States and New Hampshire judicial systems. Behind the program was Dolores Siik from Dunbarton, who devoted her energy and passion to student-exchange programs.
I was introduced to Dolores when I was in high school while my parents hosted a Venezuelan girl and a Saudi Arabian boy. As the area coordinator, Dolores would plan educational trips, and when I began practicing law, she asked me to organize trips to our local courts. She did have an ulterior motive—she was always looking for families willing to host students and hoped she could eventually persuade us to do so. Finally, in 2006, she was successful, and our family has been enriched in many ways by the students we hosted, most of whom we continue to view as part of our extended family.
Just as our government has corresponding federal and state legislative and executive branches, we have a federal and state court system. The federal courts are established by the U.S. Constitution and the state courts by the New Hampshire Constitution, although both find their origins in English law. The cases which the courts have jurisdiction over are also identified in the Constitutions. Some cases can only be heard in the federal courts, for example, those involving patents, or suits against the United States or one of its agencies.
Thus, for example, if your car is hit by a U.S. postal truck you must sue the driver in federal court, even though the laws that apply are the same traffic laws that apply to all New Hampshire drivers. Other cases can be heard by both federal and state courts, and the person bringing the lawsuit gets to choose initially. The most common examples are “diversity” lawsuits, between citizens of different states.
The idea behind creating this type of federal jurisdiction was to protect the out-of-state party from the favoritism that a local judge or jury might show toward the in-state party. Even if the plaintiff decides to start it in state court, the defendant has the right to “remove” it to federal court.
There are three levels of federal courts: district, circuit, and supreme. Each state has at least one district court; the exact number is based on a state’s population. New Hampshire has only one, located in Concord, and all NH-based federal trials, both those decided by a jury and those decided by a judge, are held there. When I led the exchange student tours, we would always visit this courthouse, a magnificent stone building dedicated to the late U.S. Senator Warren B. Rudman.
The United States Circuit Courts, of which there are 12, and the U.S. Supreme Court, hear only appeals from decisions in the district courts and, in some cases, appeals from state court decisions involving federal constitutional issues. Only judges make the decisions in these appellate courts.
Most of us do not have to worry about decisions of the federal courts impacting our daily lives. Instead, we are more likely to encounter a state district court judge, for it is those courts which oversee small claims cases, traffic violations, divorce and custody cases, or probate cases when a family member dies or when a guardianship or adoption takes place.
Like the federal court system, in New Hampshire there are three levels of state courts. The first two, district and superior courts, are both trial courts, and only the supreme court decides appeals. The superior courts, of which there is one for every county and two for Hillsborough, are where jury trials take place, in all civil and criminal cases within the state courts’ jurisdiction.
Personal injury lawyers like me have the most experience in superior courts, so my exchange student trips always included a visit to the Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester. As with the United States District Court in Concord, there was always a judge willing and available to meet with us. We would usually start by watching a hearing or trial in open court (almost all court proceedings are open to the public and watching a few is a great introduction to the legal system) and then meet with the judge in “chambers” (a word dating back to the English legal system).
Our final visit was usually to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. It is in a beautiful building off Loudon Road, and, like the U.S. Supreme Court, only decides appeals from decisions of the district or superior court judges. The appeal process requires the parties to write “briefs,” which review the evidence and law in the case, and then discuss them in “oral arguments” at the court, responding to questions from the judges.
The students would be given a tour of the building, including the judges’ large, beautifully decorated “chambers,” the large library, and take in the many historic photos and objects, and then we would observe the arguments in one of the cases scheduled for the day, and finally meet with the judges in their large conference room.
These trips, and the students’ reactions and observations, would always remind me again of how great our country is—especially because of its legal system. Many of the students would be from former Soviet countries, or other countries without the freedom and openness in their governments that we often take for granted. To see our country through their eyes was worth as much as any history class.
