Appeal Appeal This article is about the legal term For other usages see Appeal disambiguation.
An appeal is the act or fact of challenging a judicially cognizable and binding judgment to a higher judicial authority In common law jurisdictions most commonly this means formally filing a notice of appeal with a lower court indicating one's intention to take the matter to the next higher court with jurisdiction over the matter and then actually filing the appeal with the appropriate appellate court.
In the old English common law the term appeal was used to describe a process peculiar to English criminal procedure It was a right of prosecution possessed as a personal privilege by a party individually aggrieved by a felony a privilege of which the crown could not directly or indirectly deprive him since he could use it alike when the prisoner was tried and acquitted and when he was convicted and pardoned It was chiefly known in practice as the privilege of the nearest relation of a murdered person When in after Colonel Oglethorpe's inquiry and report on the London prisons Banbridge and other gaolers were indicted for their treatment of prisoners but were acquitted for deficiency of evidence appeals for murder were freely brought by relatives of deceased prisoners In the case of Slaughterford the accused was charged with murdering a woman whom he had seduced the evidence was very imperfect and he was acquitted on indictment But public indignation being aroused by the atrocities alleged to have been perpetrated an appeal was brought and on conviction he was hanged as his execution was a privilege belonging to the prosecutor of which the crown could not deprive him by a pardon In an appeal was ingeniously met by an offer of battle since if the appellee were an able bodied man he had the choice between combat or a jury see wager This neutralizing of one obsolete and barbarous process by another called the attention of the legislature to the subject and appeal in criminal cases along with trial by battle was abolished in The history of this appeal is fully dealt with in Pollock and Maitland History of English Law.
In its usual modern sense the term appeal is applied to the proceeding by which the decision of a court of justice is brought for review before another tribunal of higher authority In Roman jurisprudence it was used in this and in other significations it was sometimes equivalent to prosecution or the calling up of an accused person before a tribunal where the accuser appealed to the protection of the magistrate against injustice or oppression The derivation from appellare call suggests that its earliest meaning was an urgent outcry or prayer against injustice During the republic the magistrate was generally supreme within his sphere and those who felt themselves outraged by injustice threw themselves on popular protection by provocatio instead of looking to redress from a higher official authority Under the empire different grades of jurisdiction were established and the ultimate remedy was an appeal to the emperor thus Paul when brought before Festus appealed unto Caesar Such appeals were however not heard by the emperor in person but by a supreme judge representing him In the Corpus Juris the appeal to the emperor is called indiscriminately appellatio and provocatio A considerable portion of the book of the Pandects is devoted to appeals but little of the practical operation of the system is to be deduced from the propositions there brought together.
During the middle ages full scope was afforded for appeals from the lower to the higher authorities in the church In matters ecclesiastical including those matrimonial testamentary and other departments which the church ever tried to bring within the operation of the canon law there were various grades of appeal ending with the pope.