COMPETENCE AND JURISDICTION

in law, the authority of a court to deal with specific matters. The terms are not, per se, interchangeable, but used together they convey the meaning cited above. Competence refers to the legal ability of a court to exert jurisdiction over a person or a thing (property) that is the subject of a suit. Jurisdiction, that which a competent court may exert, is the power to hear and determine a suit in court. Jurisdiction may also be defined as an authority conferred upon a court (thus making it competent) to hear and determine cases and causes. This authority is constitutionally based. Examples of judicial jurisdiction are: appellate jurisdiction, in which a superior tribunal is invested with legal power to correct, if it so decides, legal errors made in a court below; and concurrent jurisdiction, in which jurisdiction may be exercised by two or more courts over the same matter, within the same area, and at such time as the suit might be brought to either court for original determination. Other examples include federal jurisdiction and original jurisdiction (the first trial). The matter of geographic distinction is important, because a court may also be vested with authority to treat with a matter within a certain territorial extension. This becomes an important factor when a court must decide whether opposing parties have enough contact with the geographic area in which the court has jurisdiction (in which it is competent to hear and determine the case). If it is an appellate court, for example, the case must have passed through the necessary preliminary stages before being eligible for consideration by that court. In the United States, jurisdiction is largely personal. If a defendant, either a person as such or a corporation (a legal person) can be served with a subpoena to appear, the court may enter the case. In common-law countries, if personal jurisdiction is impossible to achieve, then jurisdiction may be based on ownership of property. In that decision only a person's property rights are involved, not his individual rights. In civil-law systems jurisdiction takes different attitudes: in France the courts will enter a case if one party, at least, is a French national; in Italy some link with Italy must be shown by a non-national; whereas in Germany and Austria, the location of property will determine jurisdiction.