Comment on Why have an adversarial legal system?
deadcatbounce@reddthat.com 2 days ago
You’ve got concepts confused.
Having the judge make the inquisition has nothing to do with adversarial.
The judges in the UK and US are independent of the inquisition etc. The prosecution is responsible for obtaining evidence.
In Europe, I know a little more about France, the judges are trained to be inquisitorial. I should shut up at this point and let someone who actually knows what they are talking about continue for me.
As for adversarial, still waiting for the day that criminals, for the most part, exclaim like the very old British movies and Scooby Doo cartoons that “It’s a fair cop, guv!” and then explain why and how they did it.
dynomight@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Thanks, using this terminology, I guess I’m wondering about why different places settled on “inquisitorial” systems vs (whatever the opposite of inquisitorial is)-systems. Naive, it seems like an inquisitorial system would be the obvious way to do it. I’m sure that places with non-inquisitorial systems had reasons for choosing that, but I’m not sure why or what the tradeoffs are.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
The other comments have covered a lot of the background and variances throughout the world. But what I’ll add is that few countries are purely in one camp or the other. To use the USA as an example, criminal cases are adversarial, in the sense that the defense attorney will duke it out with the government’s attorney whether someone goes to prison.
For civil cases like a contract dispute, the procedure is closer to an inquisition system, although with the judge still merely presiding over the process. But attorneys in a USA civil case can depose witnesses, much like how (I think) a European judge-led inquisition would call a witness, and similar to how British coroners conduct an inquest (if murder mystery depictions on the BBC are accurate).
Perhaps the full thrust of the inquisition style can be found in USA federal agencies, whose rulemaking capacity requires asking direct question to subject matter experts in a public forum, one which eventually leads to a determination on some germane topic, often enacting secondary legislation at the same time. Americans might not necessarily call such an action as a “ruling”, but evidence was taken, all sides were heard, and even public comment was accepted, before rendering a decision.