Talk:Inquisitorial system

Prologue
In what countries is the inquisitorial system used? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.54.53.14 (talk • contribs) i have no idea but i would like to know also. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.24.242 (talk • contribs)

This page needs to be sourced or removed for copyright violations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.87.99.14 (talk • contribs)


 * It still looks only partially sourced. Seahen 23:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The question of how to translate juge d'instruction (a French title) in English is often raised. The preferred translation is examining magistrate. I suggest it should be included in the prologue (Quaeitur (talk) 09:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC))

Check for correctness
This is incorrect. International tribunals almost universially use an inquistiorial system in which the judges ask most of the questions and there isn't a separate jury. Roadrunner 06:17, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Although international tribunals intended to try crimes against humanity, such as the Nuremberg Trials and the International Criminal Court, have generally used a version of the adversarial system, they have also incorporated some key features of the inquisitorial system, such as the use of professional judges, and in the case of the International Criminal Court, the use of a screening pre-trial chamber. See the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court for examples.

You are confusing the differences between trial by jury and trial by the court with the adversarial versus inquisitorial system. Adversarial systems need not have juries: consider Japan. In a true inquisitorial system, the court begins and conducts an investigation on its own. A good example would be the Mexican judicial police. Yet in no international tribunals has the court had power to begin an investigation; only the prosecutor has this power, which is distinctly adversarial, and is one of the most important differences. This was true at Nuremberg and is true of the ICC. See Article 15 of the Rome Statute (the prosecutor has the authority to initiate investigations himself, and only needs authorization of a pre-trial chamber when he has to go out and collect evidence; essentially a warrant-type procedure). Or consider the fact that, under ICC Article 66(2), the onus is on the prosecutor to prove the guilt of the accused - distinct from inquisitorial systems, where the court proves guilt to itself. The fact that judges ask questions isn't surprising either, as that is a common feature of the inquisitorial and adversarial systems, see (US) Federal Rule of Evidence 614 (esp. comments of the advisory committee), and control of witness interrogation has always been with the court in adversarial systems, see (US) Federal Rule of Evidence 611 (esp. comments of the advisory committee). Moreover, the proceedings at Nuremberg contained none of the inquisitorial procedures that the ICTR, ICTY, or especially the ICC have incorporated, and flexible rules of evidence and lack of juries were all that marked them out from English or American trials. See See Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992). Danculley 21:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Distinguish criminal from civil matters
I would only like to caution that the crude distinction between adversarial anglo-saxon models and inquisitorial continental-European models applies only to criminal proceedings -- which an uninformed reader may not realized from the article.

In civil matters, the question is much more complex and may well cut the other way round: Civil law systems hardly ever use discovery. Systems in the common law tradition rely heavily on it in complex litigation. Discovery is, essentially, an "inquisitorial" court order that allows a claimant to make a case against the defendant on the basis of material that is in the possession of the defendant. The reason is, again fully in the inquisitorial tradition, that proceedings should represent a quest for truth.

This is simply not the case in continental systems. Here, the assumed facts are simply what adversarial proceedings may be able to prove. If a claimant cannot prove a point, it cannot rely on the state (judge) to help it find material to prove his point. Rather, he will lose on grounds of burden of proof. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.9.133.10 (talk) 02:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

What, no criticism?
I have no formal background in law, however it seems odd to me that the Adversarial system has several paragraphs of criticism, however there appears to be none on this page. Because I lack the background, I am not comfortable adding that section to this article, but I did dig up somewhere to start: Critics argue that the inquisitorial system places too much unchecked power in the examining magistrate and judge, who both investigate and adjudicate (legally determine) the case. I found this at Bhutanese Government Trial Systems page. I don't have anything else to add here, but I hope someone who knows this subject does. - JustinWick 23:29, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Exact same comment. It seems a bit biased that we have a lot of critique of the Adversarial system and very little of the Inquisitorial System, when both certainly have critiques. 12.151.41.2 (talk) 00:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Gordon Tullock wrote an article arguing for the superiority of inquisitorial system . He says the maindrawback is the judge/jury's lack of motivation. II  | (t - c) 17:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

without juge d'instruction?
In jurisdictions with an inquisitorial system, what happens in minor criminal cases when juge d'instruction are not used? Does the law enforcement carry out summary justice, or otherwise? – Kaihsu (talk) 23:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Law enforcement (in the case of minor dismeanors, such as traffic offenses) or the public prosecutor bring the case before the courts, after investigating the case. In the case of minor traffic offenses, the accused is proposed to pay a fixed fine instead of going to court. David.Monniaux (talk) 22:01, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Name of court
Can anyone tell me what is typically the name of the court in which an investigating magistrate sits? Is is called a Court of Instruction, or something else? 78.16.224.127 (talk) 01:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If you're still looking for this information, please consider the Reference_desk/Humanities. The article talk pages are really supposed to be for discussing work on the article.  -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 19:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Although international tribunals intended to try crimes against humanity have generally used a version of the adversarial system
This statement seems

1. Very doubtful.

2. Not supported by the links.

I removed it. I am sure the Nuremberg trials were conducted in line with civil law (traditional to Germany, France and USSR), and not common law.--MathFacts (talk) 11:44, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Would have seemed logical, but the Nuremberg trials actually were conducted by common law. They pleaded "not guilty", to begin with, and so on.--93.135.42.249 (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The adversarial principle that a person could not be tried until formally accused
This is not "adversarial principle". This is principle of any civilized state. For example, here in Russia also nobody can be tried without being formally accused. Do you know any state where it is not the case? Complete bullshit.--MathFacts (talk) 11:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Removal of non-neutral and poorly written paragraph
I've removed as non-neutral and poorly written the following language, which sounds like someone from an inquisitorial-system country defending its system. Perhaps if cleaned up it would be appropriate in a "Criticism and responses" or "Advantages and disadvantages" section, but it does not belong where it is or in its current form.


 * "Also, when judges are all professional judges, there is no limit on the length of a trial as in a jury system or lay judges system, so a trial could go on for years &mdash; even more than a decade. The rules of admissibility of evidence may also allow the judge to act more like an inquisitor than an arbiter of justice. And when handing out verdict and sentences, they must publish their reasoning. Therefore, while appeal in adversarial system could be done only on procedural ground that the contest between prosecutor and defence were unfair (which may include missing evidence), in inquisitorial system, defence and prosecutor challenge ruling on the ground of reasoning of verdict and sentencing, which are made public. Therefore, all appeal process at higher court are essentially redoing of trials by higher court. However, because judge rule both verdict and sentence, it is possible for the trial at higher court to be essentially about sentencing if the guilt of accused is settled but sentence, especially for death penalty, is not. Defence could appeal to get death sentence reduced to life imprisonment or, conversely, prosecutor could appeal to change life imprisonment to death penalty."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Antediluvian67 (talk • contribs) 2 October 2016, 06:31) (UTC)
 * I think the first part of the paragraph, about very long trials, would be a disadvantage of inquisitorial systems, if true (as far as I know, countries with both systems can have very long procedures, especially when all separate procedures in a certain case are counted together, but this depends from country to country). So I wonder why you think it is all from someone defending this system. That both defence and prosecutor can appeal decisions on the ground of reasoning of verdict and sentencing is an important aspect of the (or most?) inquisitorial systems, which should be mentioned somewhere. Bever (talk) 17:45, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced history section
The current section is entirely unsourced. There's a good source for this here and the required pages in the book (pp. 7–9) are in the visible portion of the google books excerpt. Would be great if someone could verify or rewrite the history section, starting with this source as a basis. Please beware of just slapping this reference onto the end of the section, which would be worse than leaving it unreferenced; the point is to find out what content in that section is accurate (if any) and verifiable. Here are some links which may help in finding other good references: The Qwant links in particular look pretty good. I'd do it myself, and may yet do so at some point if no one else does, but I'm snowed under on other projects at the moment, so any help offered here would be appreciated as I won't be able to get to it for some time. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:07, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Odd Overview Section
The "Overview" section seems oddly focused on the adversarial legal system for this article. It is not necessary to compare the systems so much. I am considering editing down for clarity. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flubberpuff (talk • contribs) 07:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Flubberpuff (talk) 02:03, 23 January 2024 (EST)
 * , I agree that adjusting the Overview section to concentrate more on the inquisitorial system, since that is what this article is about would be a good idea. However, rather than simply remove the information, I would move the content about the adversarial system to a new section comparing the two systems. The fact is, for many readers a comparative approach will be the most informative and helpful in understanding the inquisitorial system; even a table could work well for this, with one column for adversarial, and one for inquisitorial. As an additional point: while such refactoring would help, it's far from the most important issue with this article, the lack of sufficient sourcing throughout is a much bigger deal, and that's really crying out for improvement, since WP:Verifiability is policy, and questions about refactoring the Overview is a nice-to-have, but not crucial, as there is no policy violation by leaving it as it is, even if your suggestion is a better way to do it. But it's a volunteer project, so you get to work on what you want to work on, so either way, it would improve the article. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Large addition to History section
, in this edit you added 8.5 kb to the section, with only two references. In addition, both sources are foreign: one Italian, one Romanian. While the use of a foreign source is acceptable when no equally good English source is available, there are dozens of good sources in English about this topic and per WP:NONENG English sources are preferred. Also, the great majority of your edit was unsourced. Can you redo your addition using English sources instead? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the large addition. Given that it was added sixteen minutes after a 3kb addition at another article, something dodgy is going on; maybe machine translation, maybe use of an LLM, maybe copy-paste. And that's on top of the strange sourced here, the dodgy sourcing elsewhere, and their one-day wiki career in which they added 25kb of text to seven articles in two sessions of about 45 minutes each. Mathglot (talk) 09:12, 24 January 2024 (UTC)