Why is the Crown Court called the Crown Court? The Crown Court in England handles the graver charges known as indictments. Less severe criminal proceedings are heard in magistrates' court. Why is the Crown Court named Crown Court? Does it have some sort of closer association with the Crown than does a magistrates' court?
Because prosecutions on indictment are commenced in the name of the Crown (“R”) in respect of crimes which were historically regarded as offences against the monarch. The law relating to these crimes is ancient and was described in works like Hale’s Pleas of the Crown (1736) and Foster’s Crown Law (1762). In contrast, summary criminal procedure is a more recent development which has its origin in civil proceedings between subjects. These prosecutions were commenced in the name of an individual police officer or other informant, in inferior courts which were subject to review by the “royal courts.” Thus, when the assizes and quarter sessions were abolished and replaced with a single court which would hear all “Crown cases” (and not summary prosecutions), it was natural to call it the Crown Court.
People are routinely and almost universally defended by lawyers in serious criminal cases in both civil law country and common law country legal systems. The availability of counsel for the indigent in cases involving petty crimes varies, but not in a way systemically related to the common law v. civil law distinction. It has more to do with the available supply of lawyers. The lawyer's job isn't very different, despite the fact that the lawyer has an audience of a panel of judges rather than a judge presiding over a decision making jury, although obviously lots of fine details (e.g. concerning the procedures for presenting evidence) are different. In both cases, defense lawyers call the attention to the facts favorable to the defendant's case, offer up evidence that tends to exonerate the defendant if the lawyer can obtain it, argues to the court regarding how the evidence should be interpreted and what inferences should be drawn from it, and argues regarding any ambiguities in how the law should be applied to these particular facts. Furthermore, in most criminal cases, in both civil law countries and in common law countries, guilt or innocence is not the primary issue. The primary issue for criminal defense counsel in most cases is assisting the judges in determining the right sentencing option on the right charges for a defendant who pleads guilty or is found guilty at trial of some crime, based upon the character of the crime and offender that is presented to the court by the lawyer. This part of the process is very similar indeed in the two systems. Typical issues might include an assault case where the issue is whether there was serious bodily injury, justifying a more serious sentence, or mere ordinary bodily injury, justifying only a less serious sentence, in a case where it isn't clear cut at the guilt and innocence phase, or arguing whether probation and a fine, or incarceration is a better fit to a minor offense, in the sentencing phase. It isn't entirely or primarily about &quot;legal loopholes&quot; in any system, although &quot;legal loopholes&quot; tend to be more important in U.S. criminal law than in many legal systems. There are some places in which civil law courts are more open to consider a defendant's arguments than others (and many civil law countries decide serious criminal cases with a panel that is a mix of legally trained judges and lay jurors), but that can vary wildly from country to country and within a country as well.
There is one context where this does happen. Common law judges have direct contempt power. This means that while a judge is in the courtroom presiding over a case, the judge can summarily punish someone with incarceration and/or a fine without a trial for &quot;contempt of court&quot; because the judge has personally observed what has happened. Contempt of court encompasses types of disorderly conduct that wouldn't otherwise be criminal conduct. In other contexts, the judge is just one more witness and would not be assigned to handle the case. so you can only get &quot;non-witness judges&quot; from out-of-state or another region. The lawsuit hasn't begun yet, and all of the possible, local judges saw it happen. As a practical matter, this is basically impossible. But there are procedures in cases where large numbers of judges a conflicted out of a case, for example, to get a judge from the next county over or another part of the same state.
Civil justice in England and Wales is mainly dealt with in the county courts and, in the case of more substantial or complex cases, the High Court. The jurisdiction covers a very wide range – from quite small or simple claims, for example damaged goods or recovery of debt, to large claims between multi-national companies. https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/the-justice-system/jurisdictions/civil-jurisdiction/
The judiciary is an arm of the state There is no “power grab” by the judiciary: they are simply exercising the Constitutional power they have to act as a court of record (given to them in the Supreme Court Act) and resolve disputes. In the UK (among many others), judges get paid to interpret the law - both statute and customary law - weigh the evidence and make decisions. You seem to think this isn’t their job but it is precisely their job. In general, judges try to leave their personal and political opinions outside the court, however, they are human and mistakes are sometimes made, from bias or otherwise. That’s why there is an appeals system - one judge has made a decision, 3 or more others review it. The Grainger test is as much a part of the law of the UK as the Equality Act is. It can be changed by an act of Parliament or it can be changed by a future appellate court at the same level or higher in the hierarchy. Parliament’s role is to write laws of general applicability, the administrations role is to administer those laws, including making decisions about individuals, the judiciaries role is to decide specific controversies by interpreting the law and providing guidelines for consistent decision making by future judges and officials.
Is it the case that Police in the US are unable to proceed with a charge if a victim declines to &quot;press charges&quot; and if so, how are murder charges or even more pertinently, domestic violence charges, brought to court? First of all, it is prosecutors and not police officers who actually bring criminal charges in the legal systems in the vast majority of U.S. states (although not quite all, minor offenses in Rhode Island, for example, are an exception). Second, a prosecutor does have the right to bring criminal charges even if the victim or someone affiliated with the victim does not &quot;press charges&quot;. Indeed, a prosecutor can almost always bring criminal charges over the objections of a victim, although &quot;victim's rights&quot; protections in some U.S. states require a prosecutor to confer with a victim before doing so. This said, law enforcement and a prosecutor cannot prosecute a criminal case if they have no knowledge that a crime was committed, so if no one brings a crime to the attention of authorities it is unlikely to be prosecuted. And, law enforcement and prosecutors will defer to the wishes of a victim that charges not be pressed in the legal system against an offender in many kinds of cases (although that discretion is limited in many states in domestic violence cases by statute).
In the german language, in jurisprudence, we have lots of latin terms / expressions, because latin expressions seem to be more exact. Is this also the case in the english speaking world? You are correct that there are many Latin expressions in the English speaking legal world. You are not fully correct regarding the reasons that this is the case, and in some instances this means that you can't trust a Latin legal term to mean the same thing in common law jurisprudence as it does in civil law jurisprudence. In England, Latin made its way into legal use because the clergy and literate Norman French elites spoke Latin for affairs of consequence and state and used it for that purpose in much the same manner that elites in India today use the English language. But, they were using Latin to document their own rulings and decisions in the feudal records which were largely based on tradition, common sense and local custom and practice. (This was also true in Scandinavia until the Scandinavians adopted legal codes based upon continental models in the 18th and 19th centuries or so.) In Germany (and most of continental Europe) the situation was different. In the Roman Empire, the judicial role was delegated mostly to people we would call arbitrators these days, who issued written decisions in Latin after cases were litigated before them by people we would call lawyers today, and these were collected, edited, arranged by subject and published in books that are the equivalent of the legal digests or case reporters today. When the Roman Empire collapsed, these fell into disuse, but monks continued to copy sets of them of future generations through the dark ages. Then, sometimes around the late Middle Ages/early Rennaisance it became fashionable for lords and officials making judicial determinations to reference these digests in their decision making on something of a grass roots basis until it became accepted practice after a few centuries for there to be formally trained jurists who were familiar with the digests and it was expected that these trained professionals relying on these historic Roman legal sources were the only legitimate way to make legal decisions. This process is called the "reception" of Roman law in early modern Europe and was the foundation of the law in most continental European countries that ultimately became civil law countries until it was so jumbled and arcane that Napoleon streamlined it by having an expert prepare his civil code with the idea that it could be used to get fair and accurate legal resources without lawyers or legally trained jurists. Germany and Spain then copied this efforts in their respective national styles. Germany strove to be more detailed and more exactly accurate in codifying the Roman law substrate using "legal science" intended for use by legal professionals, and has a longer more detailed civil code with more major categories and more rigorously consistent used of defined terms throughout their codes as a result. Spain was, if anything, a bit more loose in drafting than the French, but made substantive adjustments to reflect local ideas on the correct rule of law. These codes, in turn, were used as models by almost everyone else in Europe. To make a long story short then, Germany and other continental European countries use Latin legal terms not just because Latin was a common language of the clergy and literate elite, but because they were borrowing Roman legal terminology directly from Roman legal sources that had been preserved by monks in through the Middle Ages and then restored to active use in the early modern period, unlike the English, who were mostly coining Latin legal terms for non-Roman legal concepts or borrowing Roman legal terminology in an uninformed and frequently not technically accurate way compared to the way they were used by the trained legal scholars familiar with Roman legal sources on the continent.
First, as Mark Johnson said. Second, the job of police and prosecutors is not to put people into jail, their job is to put guilty people into jail. If you go to the police and tell them that you beat up a person, then before they investigate, they know that either you are guilty of assault, or you mistakenly believe that you are guilty of assault, or you are a phantasist who enjoys confessing non-existing crimes to the police. The police will either investigate which one it is, and may prosecute you either for assault or for wasting police time, or they may decide based on your behaviour that there was never any assault and not investigate further. I suspect they will at least question you about details of the claimed assault, to decide whether the crime is real or not.