It is also and now more commonly used to denote such a removal
for the purpose only of inquiring whether any legal errors were
committed on the trial or are to be found in the judgment. In
this sense it covers proceedings by a writ of error, and any
other mode of reviewing questions of law.[Footnote: See the
_Federalist_, No. LXXXI.] If it does not appear from the
record of the lower court that any of the errors that may be
claimed (or "assigned," as the phrase is) exist, the judgment is
affirmed; otherwise the cause is sent back for a new trial or, if
the objections are fundamental and fatal to its maintenance, is
dismissed.

Appellate courts are of many kinds. Some are such exclusively;
some mainly. In others the functions of entertaining appeals is
a minor one, most of their time being occupied in trying original
causes. An appeal from judgments of a justice of the peace, for
instance, is generally given on the merits to county courts, but
the greater part of the litigation before them comes there in the
first instance. So the judgments of county or other minor courts
are often reviewable on appeal for errors in law in some superior
court which, like them, is principally occupied in the exercise
of an original jurisdiction.

When the American colonies passed into States, as has been seen,
they were habituated to the thought of a supreme controlling
authority exercised by one tribunal of a judicial character of
last resort. The judicial committee of the Privy Council had
administered this sovereign power for them, and for a long period
of years, with general acquiescence.[Footnote: See Chap. I.] The
uniformity of result thus obtained was acknowledged to be