Jersey Girl, I think my explanation last night was more confusing than enlightening. Let me try again.Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:58 amRI help me out here. All of these state cases that are being dismissed. What will be the role of the Supreme Court in hearing these? I think I know the answer but my head is full of true crime and I might be mixing things up with appeals...or are these appeals as well? Correct me if I am wrong. If a crime case goes to an appeals court, the job of the appeals court is to ensure that attorney's and state both did their jobs, right? To make sure the defendant didn't get shafted. Is this the same thing that the Supreme Court will be sorting out?
Forgive me for my stupidity. I am surely mixing things up.
Let's start with a garden variety auto accident trial. During the pre-trial and trial portions of the case, the judge makes hundreds (maybe thousands) of decisions. He may have to resolve disputes between the sides over discovery (the formal process of gather factual information). Multiple motions may be filed to dispose of parts of the case on purely legal grounds. Before the trial starts, both sides may have filed what are called "motions in limine" -- motions to limit the evidence that the other side can present to the jury. The judge has to decide each of these motions, which will affect what the jury gets to hear or see. The defense may have filed motions to dismiss certain charges because the evidence is insufficient to even raise a question for the jury. The judge has to decide whether to grant or deny motions of the parties to strike jurors for cause. The judge also has to decide on the many objections that one side or the other makes during the trial. Finally, the judge has to decide which instructions are to be given to the jury. Then the jury is given the instructions, which tell them what the applicable law is, and they decide the fact of whether the defendant is innocent or guilty under the law. The basic division of labor is that the jury decides the facts and the judge decides the law.
If there is no jury, the judge will generally prepare a statement of facts and conclusions of law. That lets the appellate court know which standard of review it should apply.
Judges are human and humans make mistakes. In general, the job of an appellate court is to make sure that the judge didn't make a mistake that is significant enough to have affected the outcome of the case. It can also review the evidence that was presented at trial to make sure that the jury's conclusion could have been supported by the evidence.
Different standards are applied by appellate courts. Some types of issues are reviewed de novo -- the appellate substitutes its own judgment for the trial court. A good example is the interpretation of a statute. For other decisions, appellate courts use "abuse of discretion." A good example is whether to admit certain evidence. The appellate court recognizes that judges have discretion over that kind of decision and so confine themselves to deciding whether, basically, no reasonable judge could have ruled the way the trial court did. There are other standards and the names given to them vary from state to state. But, in terms of reviewing factual decisions by the jury, review is generally confined to whether there is evidence in the record from which a reasonable juror could reach the conclusion that the jury reached.
The appellate court does not review the entire trial and pre-trial record. The appealing party or parties have to state precisely which issues they think the judge got wrong and then supply the appellate court with the materials from the record that support their position. The appellate court generally confines itself to reviewing evidence presented to the trial court and legal issues raised with the trial court.
If the appellate court agrees that the judge made an error, it also must decide whether the error was serious enough to alter the result in the case. If it was, it's called "reversible error" as opposed to "harmless error."
So, in my state, the main trial courts are called Superior Courts. Parties have the right to have their cases appealed to our Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals reviews the legal errors claimed by the appealing parties and affirms or reverses. Parties can ask our State Supreme Court to review alleged errors made by the Court of Appeals, but it has discretion over which cases it reviews. Parties can appeal from the State Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court is unlikely to accept review (certiorari) unless the case involves a federal statute or regulation or the U.S. Constitution.
There are a million little exceptions to what I've written, but that's the general idea.
With lawsuits that challenge the result of elections, the situation is infinitely more complex. Each state has its own election laws, and they provide different procedures for challenging an election.
Complication number one: for some issues, the "trial" is actionably an administrative procedure. In such a case, what I've been calling the trial court can actually act as an appellate court. For example, suppose I show up at the polls and a poll challenger challenges my right to vote. The challenge triggers some kind of process, which varies from state to state. There might be a couple levels of review by election officials, where I can argue that I am an eligible voter. The final administrative ruling on election challenges might be made, say, by the County Board of elections. But I may have the right to appeal that ruling to the court system, maybe to a "trial court" which actually functions as an appeal of the County decision. The scope of its review may be limited. There is no uniformity among the states, and it takes lots of time to look at each case and see exactly what is going on.
Complication number two: the state laws for challenging an election result can use different levels of their court systems for different functions. So, just looking at the title of the court may not tell you what the court's role actually is in the process.
Complication number three: many of the lawsuits that have been filed are outside of the state's official process for challenging an election. That's true of all of the cases filed in federal court. It's also true of several of the state lawsuits, some of which seek special writs at different levels of the court system.
Complication number four: most of the lawsuit seek some kind of emergency injunctive relief (i.e., an emergency order stopping the voting, or stopping the certification process, or ordering the replacement of electors, or declaring Trump the winner.) This is relief before any trial or discovery every takes place. This kind of relief carries a pretty heavy burden of proof. Part of that burden is proving a substantial likelihood of winning on the merits after a full trial. So, the courts have to do some examination of the facts, including affidavits or even live testimony. This is a little tricky, as everyone involved in the legal system knows that affidavits are drafted by lawyers and signed by clients who often don't read them very carefully. So, we've seen several examples of witnesses who have backed off of claims in their affidavits when questioned live. Many of the affidavits I've seen or read about were signed by election "observers" who didn't understand the process they were observing. So, things that looked like "fraud" to them were actually normal procedures. This happened in one of the Michigan cases. Many of the affidavits are also conclusory -- they go beyond the facts. In this process, courts don't take conclusions by witnesses at face value. So, this process is similar to fact-finding by the judge, only the issue is not who is right, but who is very likely to be right.
Complication number five: Standing. If I hit your car, you have standing to sue me because I damaged you. But when it comes to challenging government actions, like an election, standing is its own complicated set of rules. Even if an election board breaks a rule, I may not have standing to sue over it. I have to demonstrate that I have been harmed in a way recognized by the standing rules before I can advance beyond filing a complaint. The standing rules can vary depending on the kind of claim -- equal protection and due process have their own lines of cases that set out rules for standing. I don't pretend to understand the nuances.
TL/DR These various election suits are about as complicated as law gets. That's why election litigation is a super specialized area of law. The average person trying to figure all this out is going to be completely confused. If you want to get into more detail, maybe pick a case and we can walk through what the court is doing/has done.