Appellate Jurisdiction

Appellate jurisdiction is the power of a court to hear appeals from judgments rendered by inferior courts, administrative agencies, or specialized tribunals. It is distinguished from original jurisdiction, under which a court is the first to hear a dispute and find facts. Appellate courts generally do not retry facts or hear new evidence; they review the record below for errors of law, procedural irregularities, or, in some systems, manifest errors of fact.

The scope and structure of appellate jurisdiction vary significantly across legal systems:

• In the United States, Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution grants the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over most federal matters, subject to "such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." Most cases reach the Court via a discretionary writ of certiorari.
• In the United Kingdom, the Supreme Court (established by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, operational from 2009) is the final court of appeal, replacing the appellate functions of the House of Lords.
• In civil-law jurisdictions such as France or Germany, appellate review is often broader, with intermediate cours d'appel or Oberlandesgerichte re-examining both law and fact, and a higher court of cassation reviewing only points of law.

In international law, appellate mechanisms exist in select bodies. The WTO Appellate Body, created under the 1994 Dispute Settlement Understanding, hears appeals on legal issues from panel reports — though it has been effectively paralyzed since December 2019 due to the US blocking new member appointments. The International Criminal Court also provides for appeals under Articles 81–84 of the Rome Statute. The ICJ, by contrast, has no appellate tier; its judgments are final under Article 60 of its Statute.

Standards of review on appeal typically distinguish questions of law (reviewed de novo) from questions of fact (reviewed for clear error or reasonableness), shaping how much deference appellate judges give to trial-level findings.