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On any orthodox definition, an appeal includes three basic elements: a decision (usually the judgment of a court or the ruling of an administrative body) from which an appeal is made; a person or persons aggrieved by the decision (who is often, though by no means necessarily party to the original proceedings) and a reviewing body ready and willing to entertain the appeal.

27. The elasticity of the idea is illumined by yet another passage which bears quotation:

'Appeals' can be arranged along a continuum of increasingly formalised procedure, ranging from a concerned man in supplication before his tribal chief to something as jurisprudentially sophisticated as appeal by certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. Like Aneurin Bevan's elephant an appeal can only be described when it walks through the court room door.... The nature of a particular appellate process-indeed the character of an entire legal system-depends upon a multiplicity of interrelated though largely imponderable) factors operating within the system. The structure of the courts; the status and rule (both objectively and subjectively perceived) of judges and lawyers, the form of law itself-whether, for example it is derived from a code or from judicial precedent modified by statute; the attitude of the courts to the authority of decided cases; the political and administrative structure of the country concerned-whether for example its internal sovereignty is limited by its allegience to a colonizing power. The list of possible factors is endless, and their weight and function in the social equation defy precise analysis.