{"id":23890,"date":"2021-02-01T09:34:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T09:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/2021\/02\/trial-by-combat-and-the-myths-of-our-modern-legal-system\/"},"modified":"2021-02-01T17:34:42","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T17:34:42","slug":"trial-by-combat-and-the-myths-of-our-modern-legal-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/01\/trial-by-combat-and-the-myths-of-our-modern-legal-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial by Combat and the Myths of Our Modern Legal System"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In Burgundy, in the year 590, the royal chamberlain was accused of killing one of the king\u2019s prized buffalo\u2014which, at the time, was a capital offense. With his life on the line, the chamberlain opted for trial by battle, designating his nephew to fight for him. The counterparty, the royal forester, fought on his own behalf. Although the chamberlain\u2019s nephew managed to fatally wound the forester, the injured forester killed the nephew outright. By the rule of the day, therefore, the chamberlain was judged to have been guilty of killing the buffalo in the first place, and was executed. This was one of the earliest recorded instances of trial by battle, a legal procedure for resolving disputes that persisted in western Europe for nearly 1,000 years.<\/p>\n
Trial by battle, and related procedures such as trial by ordeal, tend to be popularly characterized today as the depraved, superstitious, barbaric practices of simpletons in the distant past, who just weren\u2019t rational enough to devise a legal system based on things like \u201cevidence\u201d and \u201cstatutory interpretation.\u201d In 1454, also in Burgundy, a man named Plouvier accused a man named Coquel of murdering one of Plouvier\u2019s relatives. Coquel claimed self defense. Plouvier had no way to prove his claim, but wasn\u2019t willing to drop the matter, so he opted for combat, and the accused Coquel agreed. The battle ended with Plouvier, the larger man, kneeling on Coquel\u2019s chest and gouging out his eyes. Having been thus found guilty of unjustified murder, the eyeless Coquel was hanged. What sort of society, we might ask, would resolve disputes using such base, might-makes-right procedures? For trial by battle in particular, what sort of backwards system would allow whichever party could hire the strongest champion to prevail in legal disputes?<\/p>\n
But these disfavorable comparisons of trial by battle and trial by ordeal with our current legal practices miss the mark on two counts. First, the past was not as simple as we imagine it. Battle and ordeal existed not as entire standalone systems, but largely as methods of proof <\/em>within sophisticated legal systems. One could still prove their case by sworn testimony, by documentary evidence, or by appeal to a jury. But in some cases, particularly where there was reason to doubt the reliability of these more familiar methods, battle and ordeal existed as alternatives. <\/p>\n Second, we are not nearly as advanced as we think we are. The power dynamics laid bare in battle and ordeal will be familiar to any American trial attorney today, or simply any American who has ever been caught up in our justice system. The practice of American civil litigation\u2014i.e., a dispute between two parties\u2014far from being a noble quest toward truth, is largely an exercise in misery imposition. Whichever party can use the procedural rules to cost the other side more than they can afford (in legal fees, time expense, and reputational harm) is normally the victor. In trial by battle, it was considered completely fair to hire an expensive champion. Likewise, in our current legal system, the wealthy can retain very expensive law firms with armies of investigators and specialized software capable of processing millions of pages of documents, and a less wealthy party will retain\u2026 whatever schmuck with a law degree they can afford. In the end, might still makes right. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, criminal defendants undergo their own torturous ordeal, in which they often face the choice between pleading guilty and taking their lumps, or undergoing grueling public trials, during which an agent of the state will endeavor to vilify, humiliate, excoriate, and do everything within their power to ensure the maximum number of years are taken off the defendant\u2019s life. As with much of history, the wide gulf separating the brutality of the past from the enlightenment today is, upon closer inspection, something more of a puddle.<\/p>\n Trial by ordeal and trial by battle existed as judicial procedures in western Europe within a pretty circumscribed period of time: although there were regional variations, and early examples like the Buffalo Case cited above, the heyday of the ordeal trial was from the 9th to 11th centuries, while trial by battle seems to have been in formal judicial use from about the 12th to 14th centuries. (More recent attempts to revive trial by battle have been made: last year, a divorced man in Iowa sought permission<\/a> to formally challenge his ex-wife and her lawyer to a katana battle, asking the court for 12 weeks to locate a suitable forge. His request was not granted.)<\/p>\n
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