American Samoa § 3.1002 - Powers and duties.

§ 3.1002. Powers and duties.

(a) The Chief Justice and the Associate Justice shall be members of the High Court and, sitting separately, shall preside at all its divisions. (b) The Chief Justice shall have power from time to time to designate the associate judges who shall sit with him in the sessions of the trial, land and titles and appellate divisions of the High Court presided over by him, and also to designate the Associate Justice and the associate judges who are to sit with the Associate Justice in sessions of the trial, land and titles and appellate divisions of the High Court presided over by the Associate Justice. (c) The Chief Justice shall have administrative supervision over the High Court of American Samoa, the District Court and the village courts and their judges, magistrates, clerks and other officers. He may make rules regulating the pleading, practice, procedure and conduct of business in all the courts of American Samoa. (d) The Chief Justice shall have exclusive power to admit qualified persons as attorneys-at-law to practice generally in the courts of American Samoa or as legal practitioners to represent parties in the courts in matai or land title or other special classes of cases only, and may for cause discipline and disbar them. Amendments: 1979 Subsection (a); deleted exception for certain divisions of the High Court. Subsection (c): substituted reference to specific courts for the words “all the courts of American Samoa” in first sentence, and in second sentence substituted “all the courts of American Samoa” for the “appellate, trial, probate and land and titles divisions of the High Court and in the district courts”. Subsection (d): substituted “legal Practitioners” for agents”. Case Notes: Unlike federal rules of criminal procedure promulgated under the authority of Congress and binding on federal courts to the same extent as statutes, territorial rules are made by the Court itself, so that a time limit provided by territorial rule is not obviously jurisdictional as a similar limit provided by federal rule. Rev. Const. Am. Samoa art. III § 2; A.S.C.A. § 3.1002(c). American Samoa Government v. Tile, 8 A.S.R.2d 120 (1988).