Unit countries and cities

The national judiciary includes the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the High Economic Court. Lower court systems exist at the regional, district, and town levels. Judges at all levels are appointed by the President and approved by the Oliy Majlis. Nominally independent of the other branches of government, the courts remain under the effective control of the executive branch. As in the system of the Soviet era, the procurator general and his regional and local equivalents are both the state's chief prosecuting officials and the chief investigators of criminal cases, a configuration that limits the pretrial rights of defendants.^[1]