In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and interpreting law. Although appellate courts have existed for thousands of years, common law countries did not incorporate an affirmative right to appeal into their jurisprudence until the 19th century.
Appeal, the resort to a higher court to review the decision of a lower court, or to a court to review the order of an administrative agency. In varying forms, all legal systems provide for some type of appeal.
The concept of appeal requires the existence of a judicial hierarchy. A typical hierarchy includes, at the lowest level, trial courts of limited or special jurisdiction, often called magistrates’ courts, justices of the peace, small-claims courts, municipal courts, or police courts; trial courts of general jurisdiction that often are called district, circuit, or superior court; and a court of appellate jurisdiction, which may be the ultimate supreme court of a system. Some countries introduce an intermediate appellate court, called the court of appeals, between the trial court level and the court of ultimate appeal.
In some countries different courts serve as the highest appeals court according to the types of cases and judicial problems. In France the Cour de Cassation (the supreme court) hears appeals on the interpretation of the law, whereas the court of appeal retries cases on the issue of fact. In contrast, the Conseil d’État hears appeals both on facts and on the interpretation of law from a separate system of administrative courts. Constitutional questions are handled by a constitutional council that is both legislative and judicial.