The Significance of Dual Court Systems in Criminal Justice

The criminal justice system would be totally different today if there was no separate system of federal courts. Indeed, the investigation of many crimes would be made more complicated, since federal courts deal with crimes committed across the states or that take place at a national level (Neubauer & Fradella, 2019, 2-12b). Thus, the investigation of such crimes as drug trafficking would lack depth as the states would lack coordination and jurisdiction to judge such cases. Moreover, many of federal courts’ rulings become a precedent. Precedent is generally respected by other courts when considering a case, a situation similar to past precedent. This policy is known as “staredecisis”. The system of precedents allows federal courts contributing to the national legislation, something which state courts cannot do.

If state courts were allowed to enforce federal laws, criminal behaviors dealing with crimes committed across the country would be directly affected. Indeed, with each state having individual jurisdiction, there would be disputes about the jurisdiction of what state should be considered in each case. Moreover, crimes that are considered to be especially dangerous such as terrorism would not get proper consideration. Investigators would have difficulties uniting all cases into a single whole, that would lessen the extent to which such crimes are disclosed and punished. Terrorists could commit their crimes in different states before being caught which would lead to the extension of such crimes across the country.

I believe the dual court system to be highly functional since it allows dividing the crimes according to the level of threat they pose for the society. Thus, lesser crimes are considered by state courts while crimes that present a serious threat for the American people are considered in federal courts. Moreover, federal courts are actively engaged in legislation through a system of precedents they create, which makes the dual system especially effective and contributes to the unification of a legislative base across the country.