Civil law > customary law >> religious law >>> common law

>. Legislators bring their own biases onto parliament but the rules they make are then severed from their influence.
How are they any more "severed from their influence" than a judicial decision entered in?

>How many people were punished more or less severely due not to the nature of the case but because of the judge's characteristics?
This has nothing to do with Common Law you retard. Individual circuit court decisions are not entered into stare decisis decisions.

>This without even getting into plea bargains, the most scary thing about this system. People who can't afford to go through the court process or are too scared can be pushed to declare to declare themselves guilty when they are not.
That has nothing to do with civil law vs common law you idiot. France, for instance, has a plea bargaining system despite being civil code. Do you even know what the words you're using mean?

>How are they any more "severed from their influence" than a judicial decision entered in?
Their rules are applied to everyone equally without their input. They can't inject their characteristics onto particular court cases.

>This has nothing to do with Common Law you retard. Individual circuit court decisions are not entered into stare decisis decisions.
It is a problem with common law, it is at that level that inequity in application of law occurs.

>
That has nothing to do with civil law vs common law you idiot. France, for instance, has a plea bargaining system despite being civil code. Do you even know what the words you're using mean?
It is a case of Anglo-Saxon influence. It was introduced in 2004, only, and it is very limited. Civil law itself makes it much harder for innocent people to be convicted, because saying "I'm guilty" is just another piece of evidence and the prosecution still needs to present evidence. It also can't drop a charge just because the defendant says he is willing to be convicted for one thing if it would spare him from risking being convicted for another thing.

>Retrospectively making something illegal or legal is wrong - we either did something that was a crime at the time or we didn't.

Fucking retard what do you think common law is? Some guy in a wig who determines who should and shouldn't be imprisoned based on his whims? The questions that are resolved by judges are those of interpretation and conformity. Legislators are fucking retards and create laws which conflict with one another all the time, in particular in a decentralized system such as the United States. When the courts nullify a law it is done always in favor of the higher or older authority. Further, the vast majority of decisions have nothing to do with legality and far more to do with proper legal reasoning as well as meted punishment based on the case, and most importantly questions of liability. If a street lamp falls down and totals your car, who is responsible? The city? The man who installed the lamp? The company that sells? Is anyone at all responsible? These are the questions typically received and answered by judges on a case by case basis, issued only in the narrowest of sense. Finally who have failed to answer the question of why laws must be written behind a veil of ignorance and quite frankly what that even means. Common Law has worked for two successive global powers, and it is the law of choice for commerce. What is wrong with what functions.

I think you willfully misrepresent my point. In you argue that you cannot create a code of law which can handle all possible cases. I argue that if the law hasn't been taken a stance on some type of behavior already that it shouldn't be illegal. As these problems emerge, society's response to new issues must be adressed by the people entrusted to legislate - and the legislative process should be far removed from the particular instances of behavior the legislation is meant to adress. This relates to the concept of veil of ignorance, adopted through other names (Rawls refered to it the way I do here) by most of the political theorists that laid the foundations for our system, like John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. It is meant to protect individuals from the biases and prejudices of the lawmakers. For instance, knowing that for the same criminal records blacks tend to be assigned heavier sentences than whites, you'd want the people deciding what sentences should be applied to have no knowledge of the defendants race.

In the case of the US, the system has functioned to produce a ridiculous rate of incarcerations. Though this may relate more to a different issue with the anglo-saxon framework that, like I said in , was sadly exported (but limitedly) to french law: the option of being convicted for crimes without trial.

For international commerce, common law relates to precendence in contract intrepretation. Nonetheless international trade more and more operates within a framework inspired in civil law: WTO produces detailed top-down guidelines, and trade agreements like TRIPS and those made by the EU (which mostly operates under civil law) follow the same philosophy.

>choosing Sunlight over Reef

>Their rules are applied to everyone equally without their input.
No, just their subjective, biased, whatever input is now applied to everyone. Hardly an improvement.

>It is a problem with common law, it is at that level that inequity in application of law occurs.
No it fucking isn't you fucking idiot. Whether or not there is discretionary sentencing has nothing to do with civil code vs common law. Every civil code country ALSO has varying sentences left up to the discretion of judges, rendering your entire point meaningless.

google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjtmIqy--fZAhUBy1kKHUMCC7sQFgg5MAI&url=http://www.banksr.co.uk/images/Foreign%20Sentencing/Germany/German_Statutory_penalty_ranges.doc&usg=AOvVaw2wOBJ6CCa6JzrYI3EORENw

>Germany has a judiciary system without sentencing guidelines or sentencing commissions. Therefore there is - in general - significant room for judicial sentencing discretion.

>However, for every single type of offence a concrete statutory sentencing RANGE is provided. The only difference is whether or not you can use APPELLATE law (not conducted at trials) as a general law-making tool. At the end of the day, you will be in the same boat whether the rules of evidence, or of plea bargaining, or whatever else came to be via a judge's act as opposed to a legislator's vote. If you don't believe me, name a country and I'll show you they have similar setups, because I obviously don't have the space to list every single Civil Code country.

1/2

>It is a case of Anglo-Saxon influence.
So? And what about all those other civil code countries which also have the practice? Are they all magically being controlled by DE ETERNAL ANGLO!?
>It also can't drop a charge just because the defendant says he is willing to be convicted for one thing if it would spare him from risking being convicted for another thing.
It also can't have the same revision process that Common law allows for with remanding a faultily tried case for re-trial under a different and more accurate set of rules. But I suppose everyone who got out of prison that way deserves to be chucked back in.
>Civil law itself makes it much harder for innocent people to be convicted, because saying "I'm guilty" is just another piece of evidence and the prosecution still needs to present evidence.
[citation badly needed]. Please, demonstrate how many of these plea bargainers were really innocent and were coerced into offering up bad plea bargains instead of realizing that yes, because they were guilty, and the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to such, they could get a better deal by not wasting everyone's time and money in a pointless trial.

Not to mention that your entire point is meaningless when you're not talking about criminal trials. I don't know where you live, but where I'm from, criminal trials are about 6% of the overall court load. Civil cases, ones about property, are enormously more common and thus more important to how the legal system as a whole functions. And guess what? Dealmaking is all over the place in civil trials, in every legal system there is. If there's a problem with plea dealing, there should "logically" be an equal problem for private initiative in things like settlement offering and acceptance, or contracting for a choice of law. Nevermind that they're enormously more efficient than banning the practices, what's right is right, right?

>I argue that if the law hasn't been taken a stance on some type of behavior already that it shouldn't be illegal.

No friend. I fully understand your point. You do not understand the full compendium of what common law is or how it operates. You are a blithering fool you cannot comprehend a world where the law is not fully administered by the central state. I've stated it once and again: Judges do NOT determine what is and isn't illegal. They INTERPRET the law such it may be applied properly in a wide variety of circumstances which legislators did not conceive of, or where ambiguity of the law creates issue in unique application. They seek CONFORMITY by striking down those laws which go against or contradict previous higher order legislation or decisions. Secondly, the veil of ignorance is ridiculous concept. Every law is crafting with intent in mind, with FULL prejudice and bias on the part of lawmakers. Need I remind you that Jim Crow existed for generations? Nor is it infeasible that if judicial bias TRULY became such a problem then again the legislators could simply force the issue by passing a statue. Yes, a statue. In a common law system, the legislature holds supreme power still. And indeed, the very high rates of incarceration you so decry are due to legislators CREATING a myriad of statutes to hamstring the ability of judges to vary their decisions. Mandatory minimums force the hand of judges to issue penalties of some 25 years for crimes which no sane person would consider fair. A gram of weed costs a man his life because it has been FORCED to be the case by legislative fiat. And again on the matter of international commerce, companies do business in common law jurisdictions. Trade agreements are irrelevant to me.

Not that fool, but for the minor point of
>Judges do NOT determine what is and isn't illegal.
That's not quite true. In the U.S., statutory criminal law is an artifact of the late 19th century, and even then mostly represented a codification of already existing common criminal law. You have things like the Model Penal Code, which is even further removed; a bunch of law professors making some theory crafting that judges occasionally adopted as models and turned into law. Almost the entirety of procedural law is flat out created by judges with 0 legislative involvement. Common law is judge made law.

>Need I remind you that Jim Crow existed for generations? Nor is it infeasible that if judicial bias TRULY became such a problem then again the legislators could simply force the issue by passing a statue. Yes, a statue. In a common law system, the legislature holds supreme power still. And indeed, the very high rates of incarceration you so decry are due to legislators CREATING a myriad of statutes to hamstring the ability of judges to vary their decisions. Mandatory minimums force the hand of judges to issue penalties of some 25 years for crimes which no sane person would consider fair.
I already presented sources showing that for the same crimes, some people unfairly get assigned heftier sentences. This is only on the judges, the legislators didn't prescribe the difference. Your system was indeed made to target some people more than others. Nonetheless, this was made by targeting behaviors that were more associated with certain groups. Some groups were more heavily policed (see stop-and-frisk). Both of those things could still happen in civil law systems. But we are talking about punishment and the war on drugs laws put into a civil law system would assign equal punishments to convicts of all groups (which does not happen in the US). In fact, if whites were going to be as targeted as blacks, I bet the mandatory minimums would be much smaller.

>And again on the matter of international commerce, companies do business in common law jurisdictions. Trade agreements are irrelevant to me.
The contracts made by these companies must comply with trade agreements. That is to say, in international trade, it's elements of civil law take precedence over the elements of common law.

Judges aren't elected nor are they as accountable

>be american
>assume everything is about you

customary law > religious law >>>>>>>>> common law >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> civil law

In many jurisdictions, judges are elected. They also have considerable relevant training for the field, whereas a legislator usually just needs to win a popularity contest.

>So? And what about all those other civil code countries which also have the practice? Are they all magically being controlled by DE ETERNAL ANGLO!?
It's a troubling development that started in the 90s and started to spread. I dread that people can get convicted before having tried.

>
[citation badly needed]. Please, demonstrate how many of these plea bargainers were really innocent and were coerced into offering up bad plea bargains instead of realizing that yes, because they were guilty, and the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to such, they could get a better deal by not wasting everyone's time and money in a pointless trial.
The time the courts save in not trying guilty people paid in time taken by innocent people. What is an acceptable price?
falseconfessions.org/fact-a-figures
Even for equally guilty convicts, factors outside of the characteristics of the crime or the perpetrator, like how busy the court is, affect how unfairly punishment is carried out.
bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf

>Not to mention that your entire point is meaningless when you're not talking about criminal trials.
Generally the cases with the most severe consequences. The farthest ones from meaninglessness.

>If there's a problem with plea dealing, there should "logically" be an equal problem for private initiative in things like settlement offering and acceptance, or contracting for a choice of law.
The blame for unfair plea bargains is on the judiciary. On settlements and contracts between private parties, the judiciary can only ensure that they follow through on what they got themselves into.

>No it fucking isn't you fucking idiot. Whether or not there is discretionary sentencing has nothing to do with civil code vs common law. Every civil code country ALSO has varying sentences left up to the discretion of judges, rendering your entire point meaningless.
You know judges are provided with much stricter top-down guidelines.

>Both of those things could still happen in civil law systems.
So you don't have a point

>But we are talking about punishment and the war on drugs laws put into a civil law system would assign equal punishments to convicts of all groups (which does not happen in the US).
No it doesn't. Again Jim Crow existed. Legislators easily have the power to write directly into law statutes which directly or indirectly target certain groups and give unfair treatment to them. It already existed. It was Common Law principles of all men being equal under the law which forced the hand of legislators to introduce iniquity to the system. Even the most famous case of racial inequality Dredd Scott, required that presiding Chief Justice create a series of legal arguments stating that freed African slaves were property and foreign bodies to the politic of America, literally preventing them from entering court. Under common law men are by basic standard treated equally. It is by Common Law which slavery was first abolished, nay, deemed never to have been extent and impossible to exist on English soil. The founding principle of common law is equal treatment under the law where similar crimes meet similar punishment.

>In fact, if whites were going to be as targeted as blacks, I bet the mandatory minimums would be much smaller.
Nice meaningless speculation. You have no facts making the assertion that all criminal laws with mandatory minimums are targeted at minorities and are literally WRONG with regards to other common law jurisdictions which also have Mandatory Minimums. Common Law is not just American Law. All your problems with Common Law are problems with the American legal system, not Common Law itself.

>The contracts made by these companies must comply with trade agreements. That is to say, in international trade, it's elements of civil law take precedence over the elements of common law
And who creates these trade agreements? Legislative and executive bodies who have zero direct ties to business interests. Common Law is the form favored by individual actors wishing to resolve individual disputes. Why? Because no compendium exists which can properly and adequately resolve all the issues which arise in business disputes which common law already has. Common Law is from the bottom up, Civil Law the top down.

And to go even further, you misunderstand again what common law is. In trade agreements the civil law takes precedence, is the same as saying the statue takes precedence. Statutes already take precedence.

>So you don't have a point.
You ignored my point. Police could still be biased and that would be as bad in either system. Legistative bodies could still be biased and that would be as bad in either system. Judges being biased in civil law system wouldn't be as bad, because judges don't have nearly as much power. Unless legislators specifically write laws that prescribe higher punishments to certain populations or make laws that apply only to certain populations, which can happen in either system, people in civil law systems are less likely to suffer disparate degrees of punishment for equal crimes - because the biases of the legislator don't apply to particular cases. Unless the legislator writes that darker people should get heavier sentences for the same crimes, he can't be blamed for the observable reality in the US that, for equal crime records, the darker you are, the heavier your sentence is. That leaves the judge or the prosecutor to blame.

>You have no facts making the assertion that all criminal laws with mandatory minimums are targeted at minorities
I specifically mentioned the war on drugs, and we have one of the main drivers behind it on record saying that the purpose of the war on drugs was to target certain minorities. I argue that, if these minimums were related to behaviors that not just blacks and hispanics but also whites were likely to do at the time (say, drinking beer) there would be more public pressure against that legislation.

laws of god > laws of nature > laws of men

>he can't be blamed for the observable reality in the US that, for equal crime records, the darker you are, the heavier your sentence is. That leaves the judge or the prosecutor to blame.
And again retard, this is a problem with the US. Not common law. You have blacks in England being tried fairly and equitably. If any minority seems to have increased sentencing in relation to a majority, I would then ask the warranted question: Do they deserve it? I assure you, if you read the court proceedings of every case, the majority of black defendants in the United States act as hooligans in Court, and make poor clients for defense because they make no effort to appear contrite. Widespread blind racism in the United States has ceased to exist. What racial prejudice that does exist, deserves to. Common Law is in the details, and the weeds. Civil Law is empty platitudes. Secondly, and even further, what if indeed the blacks faced harsher punishment for equal crimes, for equal comportment in court, for equal everything? If the issuance was in agreement with opinions of the people in that locality, then there is nothing wrong with it. Leave people as they are, rather than forcing them to be something else.

>I specifically mentioned the war on drugs, and we have one of the main drivers behind it on record saying that the purpose of the war on drugs was to target certain minorities. I argue that, if these minimums were related to behaviors that not just blacks and hispanics but also whites were likely to do at the time (say, drinking beer) there would be more public pressure against that legislation.

Firstly, you make the fallacious assumption that because one person has ill intentions (if they were ill) that all or even a majority of initiators to start the drug war had ill intentions. Secondly, I argue that your statement has no meaning because you say ALL MANDATORY MINIMUM sentences would be reduced, which I disprove. You have a problem with the US not Common Law.