A switching element is provided, which is capable of short-circuiting or
opening three or more nodes simultaneously, and in which the surface area
occupied on a substrate can be reduced. The switching element of the
present invention has an active layer, an insulating film contacting the
active layer, a gate electrode contacting the insulating film, and three
or more connection electrodes. The active layer has at least one channel
forming region and three or more impurity doped regions, and the
connection electrodes are each connected to a different impurity region.
An impurity region contacting an arbitrary connection electrode contacts
only one of the channel forming regions.