Appellate court

An appellate court is any court of law empowered to hear a case on appeal from a trial court or other lower tribunal, serving in most judicial systems as an intermediate body that reviews whether a lower court applied the law correctly rather than re-hearing evidence or re-deciding facts. In the three-tiered court structure common to many jurisdictions, appellate courts sit between trial courts and supreme courts and handle the great majority of appeals. They review questions of law independently, without deferring to the lower court, but generally defer heavily to a trial court's findings of fact because it directly observed the evidence and witnesses, and where they find a reversible legal error they may reverse, remand, or modify the decision below.