Hearing (law)
In law, a hearing is a proceeding before a court or other decision-making body or officer, such as a government agency or a legislative committee. Description. A hearing is generally distinguished from a trial in that it is usually shorter and often less formal. In the course of litigation, hearings are conducted as oral arguments in support of motions, whether to resolve the case without further trial on a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment, or to decide discrete issues of law, such as the admissibility of evidence, that will determine how the trial proceeds. Limited  evidence and testimony may also be presented in hearings to supplement the legal arguments. Types. Terminology varies from country to country, and there are different types of hearings under different legal systems. A preliminary hearing (also known as evidentiary hearing, probable cause hearing, and other variant terms) is a proceeding, after a criminal complaint has been filed by the prosecutor, to determine whether there is enough evidence to require a trial. Australia. A hearing is a part of the court process in Australia. There are different types of hearing in a case. There may be several hearings, although not all  may be scheduled. These include: United States. In the United States, one aspect of the "due process revolution" is that many administrative decisions that were once made much less formally must now be preceded by a hearing. An important step in this development was the Supreme Court decision in "Goldberg v. Kelly", 397 U.S. 254 (1970). There the Court held that an agency could not terminate a recipient's welfare benefits without a pre-termination hearing. The decision also illustrated that what constitutes a "hearing" can depend on the context. In "Goldberg", the goal of a speedy decision was held  to "justify the limitation of the pre-termination hearing to minimum procedural safeguards," which included such basic matters as the right to appear and to cross-examine witnesses, but did not include "a complete record and a comprehensive opinion".