Meta you fuck, I spent like 10 minutes on that just for you. The least you can do is a like or response.

Congrats. I didn't know Sweden had a system like that.

Quote from: Byrne on July 10, 2015, 06:53:55 AM

Shitposting on Septagon isn't allowed.

How is wanting to have our greatest mod back a shit post?

Byrne is right, this is no Septagon tier thread. That shouldn't stop you from PM'ing Cheat your recommendations, though.

Quote from: Flee on July 10, 2015, 03:23:39 AM

Well, the juries and verdicts by peer review should largely be abolished in the first place.

But if you'd still decide to keep it, the jury should be informed of all personal information and racial background.

You think juries should be abolished?

Is that a "fringe" view, in the legal profession?

Depends on where you live, really. Several countries have already completely abolished juries (The Netherlands and Germany, I believe) while others are gradually getting rid of them or limiting their influence (France and Belgium, for example). Juries are a much more fundamental part of common law than they are of civil law, so I imagine that thinking that they should be (largely) abolished would be a very unpopular opinion in the US, while it would be a lot more open for debate in Europe.

Juries sound nice in theory but they are very flawed in practice.

For one, their entire reason to exist is pretty much void in this day and age. It's a system that was devised when a clear gap existed between the bourgeoisie and the common man. Only the wealthiest and most priviliged would become judges and they would often prove to be very biased, politically motivated and ruling entirely in self interest and with little to no attention to the rule of law. Now, we've reached a point where that barrier has mainly disappeared and the judge's role is well regulated. The idea that the judge still stands outside of the normal society and acts out of biased self interest as opposed to the common folk who alone are capable of proper (peer) review is outdated.

In combination with that, there's also the problems with the representativity of the people. Or as my professor criminal procedure law put it: "the relativity of the representativity". Many legal systems employ a substition mechanism, where the parties involved can choose to remove certain members of the jury candidates for a multitude of reasons. For example, it's not much of a surprise that in cases involving children, the defense would much prefer there not being any mothers on the jury, or in a case about a minority victim, other members of said minority. What adds to this is that there are many ways one can escape jury duty. Not only are certain groups usually excluded (clergy, military, politicians, magistrates...), it's also clear that "important" people such as doctors, CEO's, business owners, professors, caretakers and so forth very rarely end up on a jury when they can show that doing so would put an unreasonable burden on themselves or their financial situation. Because of this, the jury rarely is an adequate representation of society.

Then, jury reviews cost a lot and are very time consuming. This obviously isn't always the case because different countries will always have different systems, but it's a generally accepted fact that forcing a bunch of people to sit there, listen to the case and then reach a judgement, in combination with all of the extra safeguards and procedures that come into play, is significantly slower and more expensive (both to the legal system and the people as a whole) than a trial by judge, which adds to the legal delay and creates trials that last years / decades.

There's a lot of legal problems too. These cases are often very detailed and specific, requiring a great deal of legal expertise that a jury necessarily lacks. Instead of having a proper procedure by the law, you are essentially giving the driver's seat to the eloquent attorneys who simply have to convince a largely uneducated jury that person X is in the right. You are effectively putting a very serious thing that will determine the rest of another person's life in the hands of unexperienced people to be swayed by the person who can present his side of the facts the best by relying on appeals to emotion and other fallacies. The jury is overwhelmed by the whole scenario and ends up being more enticed by the pretty speeches than by actual points of law and hard evidence. You can always do what some countries do, which is letting the judges be part of the decision making process, but then there's the risk of the judge influencing the others.

You're having uneducated people deal with very advanced issues of law. A jury is not familiar with the terminology and existing jurisprudence. There are so many little details that they are not familiar with, yet you still expect these people to adequately deal with things like "what constitutes as an attempted murder, when does manslaughter turn into murder, how does shared responsibility work, what are the intricacies of embezzlement cases,.." and so on, which really isn't desirable. They'll give uninformed and often biased decisions, swayed by the attorneys and based on their misunderstanding of the law.

There's also the issue of appeal. Should you be able to appeal against a judgement by jury? On the one hand, you'd say that it's pointless. The people have spoken. Simply redoing everything (which again, costs a shit ton) with a different jury simply feels wrong and even more random, as you've basically gotten to the point where the first trial never even mattered and you're just going to throw the dice and see if another random group of people thinks differently. But on the other, it also feels very counter intuitive that you can appeal and go all the way up to the highest court for nothing but a $50 traffic ticket, but that you wouldn't be able to do so against accusations of murder that'll have you thrown in the jail for the rest of your life.

Some more things include: group pressure to reach the unanimous conclusion, issues with providing motivation for the ruling, the influence of the media / society on big trials (juries used to be locked in the court house to prevent any outside interference, but now the members of the jury get to go home each day and get their fill of Fox News' interpretation of how the trial should go), the distinction between deciding on guilt and the actual punishment and so forth.

Because of all this, I personally think that they should be abolished, except for maybe the most serious cases when judges are part of the decision making process.

And god fucking dammit Meta, you always drive me to write these massive posts without me even realizing it.

Well, the juries and verdicts by peer review should largely be abolished in the first place.

But if you'd still decide to keep it, the jury should be informed of all personal information and racial background.

Quote from: Flee on July 09, 2015, 03:12:28 PM

Quote from: The Lord Ruler on July 09, 2015, 02:24:26 PM

Quote

In the Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia, sick children are allowed to request it, but only if they are 12 years or older.

Not too sure how I feel how this part though. I think 12 is too young to decide that.

There's no age limit here.

So an 8 year old can decide  to be euthanized?

If the conditions are met, then yes.

Which would be as wrong as a straight up 130,000 dollar emotional suffering claim, IMO.

Because the fees are so high or because the losing party would be forced to pay them?

Quote

In the Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia, sick children are allowed to request it, but only if they are 12 years or older.

Not too sure how I feel how this part though. I think 12 is too young to decide that.

There's no age limit here.

I think we all can agree that their actions were rude, but my major concern is that this type of harsh, punitive fines set a bad precedence. And at the end of the day, it seems apparent that 'the market' already imposed more than enough recourse for their action.

I agree on the punitive fines, but I hold the opinion that those are incredibly stupid to begin with.

That aside, I don't trust the market to deal with this in an effective way, and I do believe that this should be considered discrimination and should be treated accordingly.

Quote from: Flee on July 09, 2015, 11:18:11 AM

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on July 09, 2015, 10:48:45 AM

Quote from: Flee on July 09, 2015, 10:01:24 AM

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on July 09, 2015, 09:34:56 AM

Quote from: Flee on July 09, 2015, 03:27:56 AM

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on July 08, 2015, 10:28:47 PM

That's not justice, that's punitive damage.

The American system of awarding triple and punitive damages is hands down one of the worst judicial policies that still exist in the

That aside, is there any place where you can access these judgements? This makes it very unclear whether this is 135k purely emotional damages, or whether this includes the likes of legal fees and process costs.

It's typically unusual for the losing side to have to pay the other's legal fees, and when that's done it's specifically stated. In this case, the judge ruled that their emotional damages for the incident alone (not years of stress due to court, etc) was worth $135k. That's insane.

Do you have a link to the actual judgement?

I'm not sure what you mean. Lower courts don't have to come out with a lengthy explanation of the reasoning for their verdict.

I can only assume that there still exists a formal and written ruling, no?

I explored the OR courts database, but you need a login and password to get to anything.

Well that sucks.

Quote from: Flee on July 09, 2015, 03:27:56 AM

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on July 08, 2015, 10:28:47 PM

That's not justice, that's punitive damage.

The American system of awarding triple and punitive damages is hands down one of the worst judicial policies that still exist in the

That aside, is there any place where you can access these judgements? This makes it very unclear whether this is 135k purely emotional damages, or whether this includes the likes of legal fees and process costs.

It's typically unusual for the losing side to have to pay the other's legal fees, and when that's done it's specifically stated. In this case, the judge ruled that their emotional damages for the incident alone (not years of stress due to court, etc) was worth $135k. That's insane.

Do you have a link to the actual judgement?

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.

Just photoshop me in there later.

Video by MrWeeb.

She sounds like an absolutely delightful person.