ferior tribunals there have been
established 9 higher provincial courts (_Oberlandesgerichte_),[683]
74 provincial and district courts (_Landes-und Kreisgerichte_), and 96
county courts (_Bezirksgerichte_). The provincial and district courts
and the county courts, together with a group of jury courts maintained
in connection with the provincial and district tribunals, are courts
of first instance; the higher provincial courts and the Supreme Court
exercise a jurisdiction that is almost wholly appellate. There exist
also special courts for commercial, industrial, military, fiscal, and
other varieties of jurisdiction.

[Footnote 683: Located at Vienna, Graz, Trieste,
Innsbrueck, Zara, Prague, Bruenn, Cracow, and
Lemberg.]

*536. The Imperial Court.*--In Austria, as in France and other
continental countries, cases affecting administration and the
administrative officials are withheld from the jurisdiction of the
ordinary courts and are committed to special administrative tribunals.
By law of 1867 provision was made for an Imperial Court (_Reichsgericht_),
to exercise final decision in conflicts of jurisdiction between the
two sets of courts and, in general, in all disputed questions of
public law, after the manner of the Court of Conflicts in France. The
Imperial Court was organized by law of April 18, 1869. It sits at
Vienna, and it is composed of a president and deputy president,
appointed by the Emperor for life, and of twelve members and four
substitutes, also appointed for life by the Emperor upon nomination by
the Reichsrath. It decides finally all conflicts of competence (p. 485)
between the administrative and the ordinary judicial tribunals,
between a provincial diet and the Imperial authorities, and between
the independent public authorities of the several provinces of the
Empire. Very important in a country so dominated by a bureaucracy as
is Austria is the power which by fundamental law is vested in the
Imperial Court to pass final verdict upon the merits of all complaints
of citizens arising out of the alleged violation of political rights
guaranteed to them by the constitution, after the matter shall have
been made the subject of an administrative decision. The purpose
involved is to afford the citizen who, believing himself deprived of
his constitutional rights, has failed to obtain redress in the
administrative courts, an opportunity to have his