The United States Court System and Democratic Model

U.S. COURT SYSTEM
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The form of government in a country can greatly affect the administration of justice. As we have seen in previous modules, governments can be based on participatory government models or religious foundations. The United States utilizes a democratic model based on a participatory form of government while Iran’s government is based on the religious beliefs of the majority in that country and Sharia law. However, the diversity and broadness of the court system in the United States gives its citizens a better chance of getting justice than Iran's justice system.
In Iran, the head of the judiciary is appointed by the Supreme Leader and serves for a term of five years before they are replaced. Their responsibilities include establishing the organizational structure of the judicial system, hiring, promoting, firing and assigning judges as well as drafting judicial bills for parliament. According to Janin and Kahlmeyer(2007), the Supreme Court and the four-member High Council of the Judiciary have been vested all the judicial authority. This is in contrast to the USA justice system. The head of the Federal Court System is the Chief Justice. He/she is also the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court and is nominated by the president but has to be vetted by the Senate. His/her term of office is not limited to a specified amount of years. The responsibilities of the chief justice include swearing in the president, presides over the impeachment trials of the President of others. Federal judges in the USA are nominated by the president and then vetted by the Congress.
The Iranian court structure includes courts of administrative justice, supreme court, the court of appeal, public courts and revolutionary courts(Malanlou 2014). It based on the inquisitorial system of overseeing justice. The Supreme Court is the highest of all courts. The judge is the arbiter and gives the verdict. In some cases where the media is involved, a jury is allowed to be the arbiter. The USA court system, on the other hand, is based on an adversarial system and is divided into two, the federal court system and the state court system. The federal court system deals with cases in which foreign governments, citizens of foreign countries, or parties of two different states are involved, cases relating to violation of federal laws or the Constitution, maritime disputes among others. The Supreme Court is the hig...