Adversarial and Inquisitorial Models of Civil Procedure

2003 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
JA Jolowicz
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
Adversary System ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Inquisitorial System

There is a widespread belief in this country that while England and the other common law countries have an adversarial system of civil procedure, continental countries use the inquisitorial system. The fact is, however, that the only kind of situation in which a truly inquisitorial procedure can be envisaged is exemplified when a policeman who, arriving at the scene of a fracas, opens the proceedings with the time honoured formula, ‘What's going on here?’ Short of that, there is nothing to which an inquisitorial judge can direct his inquiry unless and until a complaint of some kind is addressed to him. Even writers on French administrative law, whose procedure is claimed to be inquisitorial, find it difficult to avoid language that might be thought more appropriate to an adversary system. So for example, it is said that notice of the complaint must be given to all those whom the claimant indicates as his opponents.

Judicial Legal Culture and Victim Procedural Status at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

2020 ◽  
pp. 389-411
Author(s):  
Juan-Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo
Keyword(s):  
Direct Relationship ◽  
International System ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
Educational Backgrounds ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Inquisitorial System

This chapter examines the relationship between judicial legal culture and victim procedural practices at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Starting with judicial composition, judges are categorized by their professional and educational backgrounds and legal cultures before assuming their STL/ECCC judicial positions: whether they originate from the common law/adversarial system, the civil law/inquisitorial system, or the ‘international’ system. The chapter then investigates connections between STL/ECCC practices concerning victim procedural status and the typical features of these legal cultures. Overall, it is argued that there is a direct relationship between the legal culture of judges and their judicial practices. The chapter explains how STL and ECCC judges have adapted several civil law/inquisitorial and common law/adversarial features to make victim procedural status fit the mandate and characteristics of the STL and ECCC, namely, the presence of sui generis international features.

scholarly journals Reform of civil procedure in Cyprus: Delivering justice in a more efficient and timely way

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-130
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mouttotos
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
The World

Dissatisfaction with the administration of justice is as old as law proclaimed the distinguished American legal scholar Roscoe Pound in 1906. The system of administration of justice has been under considerable scrutiny in Cyprus following the excessive delays in resolving disputes that are highlighted in reports such as the European Union’s Justice Scoreboard, the World Bank’s Doing Business Reports as well as European Commission papers on Cyprus, urging authorities to modernize the system in order to be able to meet the demands following the financial crisis. For this reason, various experts have been assigned with the task of identifying the problems and coming up with proposals and solutions. The discussions, though, are not new as similar problems have been presented in common law jurisdictions, in particular, but they have been tackled decades ago, with the adoption of reforms that moved the adversarial system of justice closer to civilian stereotypes.

Reform of Administrative Law Remedies — Method or Madness?

1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-366
Author(s):  
David Mullan
Keyword(s):  
Nova Scotia ◽  
New South ◽  
Common Law ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
The Past ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Subject

In the past few years, the subject of administrative law remedies has been studied intensively in many common law jurisdictions. In this article, David Mullan examines the various reforms and proposals for reform and concludes that none is completely satisfactory and indeed that some compound previous problems and create new ones as well Nevertheless, he sees some merit in the New South Wales and Nova Scotia solutions which emerged as part of a general reform of the civil procedure rules and not as a separate statutory enactment.

The Influences of Common Law on the Brazilian New Code of Civil Procedure

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 176-180
Author(s):  
Lucas Alves Edmundo Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
English Language ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

AbstractMost legal scholars assume that there are only two “families” of legal systems in the world: common law and civil law. Briefly, common law is applied in all countries that speak the English language and has its origination from the “habits of society.” On the other hand, civil law is applied just about everywhere else, with a few exceptions, such as in tribal law areas, jurisdictions that follow Islamic law, and a few other smaller legal systems. Brazil's New Code of Civil Procedure was promulgated in 2015 and brought innovations to Brazilian law. Elements of common law were incorporated into the Brazilian legal system, particularly that of using precedent. The application of common law elements in Brazilian law is being studied by various legal specialists. This present study explains how common law can be applied in civil law jurisdictions, similar to the way it is being adapted and applied in Brazil.

The Africanisation Of South African Civil Procedure: The Way Forward

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fawzia Cassim ◽  
Nomulelo Queen Mabeka
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Seventeenth Amendment ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
The Law ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
The Impact

Civil procedure enforces the rules and provisions of civil law.  The law of civil procedure involves the issuing, service and filing of documents to initiate court proceedings in the superior courts and lower courts. Indeed, notice of legal proceedings is given to every person to ensure compliance with the audi alteram partem maxim (“hear the other side”). There are various rules and legislation that regulate these court proceedings such as inter alia, the Superior Courts Act, 2013, Uniform Rules of Court, Constitution Seventeenth Amendment Act, 2012 and the Magistrates’ Courts Act of 1944. The rules of court are binding on a court by virtue of their nature.  The purpose of these rules is to facilitate inexpensive and efficient legislation. However, civil procedure does not only depend on statutory provisions and the rules of court.  Common law also plays a role. Superior Courts are said to exercise inherent jurisdiction in that its jurisdiction is derived from common law.  It is noteworthy that whilst our rules of court and statutes are largely based on the English law, Roman-Dutch law also has an impact on our procedural law. The question thus arises, how can our law of civil procedure transform to accommodate elements of Africanisation as we are part and parcel of the African continent/diaspora? In this regard, the article examines the origins of Western-based civil procedure, our formal court systems, the impact of the Constitution on traditional civil procedure, the use of dispute resolution mechanisms in Western legal systems and African culture, an overview of the Traditional Courts Bill of 2012 and the advent of the Traditional Courts Bill of 2017. The article also examines how the contentious Traditional Courts Bills of 2012 and 2017 will transform or complement the law of civil procedure and apply in practice once it is passed into law.

Common Lawà l'americaine

1966 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Apelbom
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law ◽  
Considerable Body ◽  
Clear Line

Eighteen years after attaining independence Israel remains essentially a common law country. Introduced by the British Mandatory administration to supplement the Ottoman legislation in force at the time of the British occupation of Palestine, the common law has been retained by the Israeli legislator, so far as not modified or replaced by local legislation. But this common law, far from being residual only, also embraces a considerable body of interstitial law developed by two generations of judges, British, Palestinian and Israeli, in the process of applying and interpreting statute law—whether Ottoman, Mandatory or Israeli—according to common law methods. On the other hand the importation of common law institutions was neither wholesale nor systematic and in a number of fields no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between domestic and English law.

scholarly journals Thabo Meli Revisited: The Pernicious Effects of Result-Driven Decisions

2013 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Arenson
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
The Common

Despite the hackneyed expression that ‘judges should interpret the law and not make it’, the fact remains that there is some scope within the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to develop the common law incrementally. To this extent, the courts can effectively legislate, but only to this limited extent if they are to respect the separation of powers doctrine. On occasion, however, the courts have usurped the power entrusted to Parliament, and particularly so in instances where a strict application of the existing law would lead to results that offend their personal notions of what is fair and just. When this occurs, the natural consequence is that lawyers, academics and the public in general lose respect for both the judges involved as well as the adversarial system of criminal justice. In order to illustrate this point, attention will focus on the case of Thabo Meli v United Kingdom in which the Privy Council, mistakenly believing that it could not reach its desired outcome through a strict application of the common law rule of temporal coincidence, emasculated the rule beyond recognition in order to convict the accused. Moreover, the discussion to follow will demonstrate that not only was the court wrong in its belief that the case involved the doctrine of temporal coincidence, but the same result would have been achieved had the Council correctly identified the issue as one of legal causation and correctly applied the principles relating thereto.

Liberating Malawi's Administrative Justice Jurisprudence from Its Common Law Shackles

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
Administrative Justice

AbstractThe 1994 Malawian Constitution is unique in that it, among other things, recognizes administrative justice as a fundamental right and articulates the notion of constitutional supremacy. This right and the idea of constitutional supremacy have important implications for Malawi's administrative law, which was hitherto based on the common law inherited from Britain. This article highlights the difficulties that Malawian courts have faced in reconciling the right to administrative justice as protected under the new constitution with the common law. In doing so, it offers some insights into what the constitutionalization of administrative justice means for Malawian administrative law. It is argued that the constitution has altered the basis and grounds for judicial review so fundamentally that the Malawian legal system's marriage to the English common law can be regarded as having irretrievably broken down as far as administrative law is concerned.

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