Judicial panel in the context of "Roe v Wade"

A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility and arguments of the parties, and then issues a ruling in the case based on their interpretation of the law and their own personal judgment. A judge is expected to conduct the trial impartially and, typically, in an open court.

The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. In some jurisdictions, the judge's powers may be shared with a jury. In inquisitorial systems of criminal investigation, a judge might also be an examining magistrate. The presiding judge ensures that all court proceedings are lawful and orderly.

A judicial opinion is a form of legal opinion written by a judge or a judicial panel in the course of resolving a legal dispute, providing the decision reached to resolve the dispute, and usually indicating the facts which led to the dispute and an analysis of the law used to arrive at the decision.

A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes findings of fact and reaches a verdict. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.

Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many common law judicial systems, but not all. Juries or lay judges have also been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases.

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an abortion prior to the point of fetal viability. The decision struck down many State abortion laws, and it sparked an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication.

The case was brought by Norma McCorvey—under the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"—who, in 1969, became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas where abortion was only legal when necessary to save the mother's life. Her lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion. However, it also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interest in protecting both women's health and prenatal life. It resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. The Court also classified the right to abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States.

In law, an en banc (/ˌɑːn ˈbɑːŋk/; alternatively in banc, in banco or in bank; French: [ɑ̃ bɑ̃]) session is when all the judges of a court sit to hear a case, not just one judge or a smaller panel of judges.For courts like the United States Courts of Appeals, in which each case is normally heard by a three-judge panel instead of the entire court, an en banc review is usually used for only very complex or important cases or when the court believes there is an especially significant issue at stake. En banc is a French phrase meaning "in bench." Convening an en banc court may enhance a court’s legitimacy by ensuring the quality and consistency of its case law and by signalling broad collective ownership of outcomes by all the court’s judges.

The Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a standing body of seven persons that hears appeals from reports issued by panels in disputes brought on by WTO members. The WTOAB can uphold, modify or reverse the legal findings and conclusions of a panel, and Appellate Body Reports, once adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), must be accepted by the parties to the dispute. The WTOAB has its seat in Geneva, Switzerland.

The appellate body been termed by at least one journalist as "effectively the supreme court of world trade". The body established a dispute mechanism that allowed states, regardless of their size and power, to enforce predictable market access or at the very least secure authorization to retaliate for harms.