Until the Medieval inquisition in the 12th century, the legal systems used in medieval Europe generally relied on the adversarial system to determine who could be tried for a crime and whether they were guilty or innocent. Under this system, unless a person were caught in the act of committing a crime, they could not be tried for a crime until they had been formally accused, either by the voluntary accusations of a sufficient number of witnesses or by an inquest (an early form of grand jury) convened specifically for that purpose. A weakness of this system was that because it relied on the voluntary accusations of witnesses, and because the penalties for making a false accusation were severe, would-be witnesses could be hesitant to actually make their accusations to the court, for fear of implicating themselves. Because of the difficulties in deciding cases, procedures such as ordeal or combat were accepted, though it is generally agreed nowadays that these procedures are not acceptable ways of finding truth or settling a dispute.
Beginning in 1198, Pope Innocent III issued a series of decretals that reformed the ecclesiastical court system. Under the new processus per inquisitionem (inquisitional procedure) an ecclestiastical magistrate no longer required a formal accusation to summon and try a defendant. Instead, an ecclesiastical court could summon and interrogate witnesses of its own initiative, and if the (possibly secret) testimony of those witnesses accused a person of a crime, that person could then be summoned and tried. In 1215, the Fourth Council of the Lateran affirmed the use of the inquisitional system. The council also forbade clergy from conducting trials by ordeal or combat. As a result, in parts of continental Europe, the ecclesiastical courts operating under the inquisitional procedure became the dominant method by which disputes were adjudicated. In France, the parlements — lay courts — employed inquisitorial proceedings.
In England, however, King Henry II had established separate secular courts during the 1160s. While the ecclesiastical courts of England, like those on the continent, adopted the inquisitional system, the secular common law courts continued to operate under the adversarial system. The adversarial principle that a person could not be tried until formally accused continued to apply for most criminal cases. In 1215 this principle became enshrined as article 38 of the Magna Carta: "No bailiff for the future shall, upon his own unsupported complaint, put anyone to his law, without credible witnesses brought for this purposes."
2007-02-12 21:31:47
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answer #1
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answered by ♥!BabyDoLL!♥ 5
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in america, but don't worry current in office don't like so make fake and pick fake, only use when politician, corrupt cop, or individual working for them or their kid to get cases thrown out with jury "nullification" because they're guilty and just can't throw out charges, or the organized criminals running the gov will use against you to try to make look like general public decided, you can tell when organized crime running because complain about everything else corrupt except courts and judges lol, like in godfather movies, organized crime running media, and it ain't "italians" lol
2007-02-13 05:41:30
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answer #2
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answered by Anonymous
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