Judicial Branch
The state trial courts of general jurisdiction are the West Virginia Circuit Courts, There are 31 judicial circuits, each made up of one or more counties, with a total of 70 Circuit Judges. Domestic cases are handled by Family Courts. There are 27 Family Court Circuits with a total of 45 judges. Local judges are elected in partisan elections to serve eight-year terms on a partisan basis. Small claims and midemeanor case are heard by magistrates elected for four years, with between two and ten in each county, based on population. Magistrates are not lawyers.
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals is the state supreme court. It purports itself to be the busiest appellate court of its type in the United States, in part because West Virginia is one of only 11 states to not have an intermediate appellate court. (The West Virginia Constitution allows for the creation of an intermediate court of appeals, but the Legislature has never done so). The Supreme Court of Appeals has five justices. Justices must have practiced law for at least ten years. The five justices are elected in partisan elections to 12-year terms. The current justices are Justice Brent Benjamin, Justice Robin Davis, Justice Margaret Workman, Justice Thomas E. McHugh, and Justice Menis Ketchum. By tradition, the position of "Chief Justice" rotates yearly. It primiraly brings extra administrative duties.
Read more about this topic: Government Of West Virginia
Famous quotes containing the words judicial and/or branch:
“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)