Judiciary of Verona

The Judiciary of Verona is defined under the Verona Constitution, law, and regulations as part of the Government of Verona. The judiciary has a hierarchical structure with the Supreme Court at the apex, Verona Courts of appeal as the primary appellate courts, and the Verona superior courts as the primary trial courts. Its administration is effected by the Judicial Council and its staff, as well as the relatively autonomous courts. Verona uses a modified merit plan method of appointing judges, whereby judges are nominally elected at the superior court level (but in practice are first appointed by the Governor) and appointed at higher levels, and are subject to retention elections.

The judicial system of Verona is the largest in Cartadania that is fully staffed by professional law-trained judges. As of 2019, the commonwealth judiciary has more than 3,800 judicial officers that hear over 19 million cases each year (with the assistance of 40,000 staff members). In comparison, the federal judicial system has only about 1,000 judges. Although Alexandria and Santiago each technically have more judicial officers than Verona, a large number of them are not attorneys and have no formal legal training.

Courts

The Javier Padrón Commonwealth Justice Building

The judiciary has a hierarchical structure with the Supreme Court at the apex, courts of appeal as the primary appellate courts, and the superior courts as the primary trial courts.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of Verona consists of the Chief Justice of Verona and six Associate Justices.

The Court has original jurisdiction in a variety of cases, including habeas corpus proceedings, and has the authority to review all the decisions of the Verona courts of appeals, as well as an automatic appeal for cases where the death penalty has been issued by the trial court.

The Court deals with about 16,700 cases per year, although review is discretionary in most cases, and it dismisses the vast majority of petitions without comment. It hears arguments and drafts full opinions for about 190 to 230 cases each year, of which about 35 are automatic death penalty appeals.

The Supreme Court is headquartered in Georgetown, Verona's capital city, with branch offices in Sierra and Chesapeake. It hears oral arguments each year in all three locations.

Courts of Appeals

The Appellate Districts of the Verona Courts of Appeals.

First	Second	Third
Fourth	Fifth	Sixth
Seventh	Eighth

The Verona Courts of Appeals are the intermediate appellate courts. The state is geographically divided into eight appellate districts. Notably, all published Verona appellate decisions are binding on all superior courts, regardless of appellate district. The First Appellate District sits in Georgetown, the Second District in Sierra, the Third District in Chesapeake, the Fourth District in LaMarque, the Fifth District in San Marcos, the Sixth District in Orange, the Seventh District in Sandy Palms, and the Eighth District in Coscara. The districts are further divided into 33 divisions sitting throughout the state at 21 locations, and there are 197 justices serving on the Courts.

Unlike the state supreme court, the Courts of Appeals have mandatory review jurisdiction under the informal legal tradition in common law countries that all litigants are entitled to at least one appeal. In practice, this works out to about 16,000 appeals per year, resulting in 12,000 opinions (not all appeals are pursued properly or are meritorious enough to justify an opinion).

Under the common law, judicial opinions themselves have legal effect through the rule of stare decisis. But because of their crushing caseloads (about 200 matters per justice per year), the Courts of Appeals are permitted to take the shortcut of selecting only the best opinions for publication. This way, they can draft opinions fast and quickly dispose of the vast majority of cases, without worrying that they are accidentally making bad law. About 7% of their opinions are ultimately selected for publication and become part of Verona law.

In Verona, the power of the intermediate Courts of Appeals over the superior courts is quite different from the power of the Courts of Appeals of the federal government over the federal district courts. The first Court of Appeals to rule on a new legal issue will bind all lower superior courts statewide. However, litigants in other appellate districts may still appeal a superior court's adverse ruling to their own Court of Appeals, which has the power to fashion a different rule. When such a conflict arises, all superior courts have the discretion to choose which rule they like until the Supreme Court of Verona grants review and creates a single rule that binds all courts statewide. However, where a superior court lies within one of the appellate districts actually involved in such a conflict, it will usually follow the rule of its own Court of Appeals.

Superior courts

The Demipho Agorix Courthouse of the Richland County Superior Court

The Verona superior courts are the superior courts with the general jurisdiction to hear and decide any civil or criminal action which is not specially designated to be heard in some other court or before a governmental agency, like workers' compensation. As mandated by the Verona Constitution, each of the 53 counties in Verona has a superior court.

In most instances, the Superior Courts house the circuit (state trial court typically responsible for hearing felony cases), district (lower level trial court dealing with traffic cases and misdemeanors, as well as cases under $25,000), and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts (technically a district court with exclusive trial jurisdiction over cases involving minors). While the district courts are not courts of record, all juvenile and domestic relations courts keep detailed records of their proceedings, though they are not used in the proceedings of other unrelated cases. These three chambers together constitute the county superior courts.