Apparently, here in the E.U we're all guilty.. or not?

[Sir Sirius]

From the website of the European Court of Human Rights:

Article 6 – Right to a fair trial
...
2 Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

You can download the whole thing as a pdf here.

Let's check these links Perinquus gave.

• First link, notice the total absence of a source to justify that statement, they just say that the EU will make GB do this or that, but provide no further info on the subject. Rather suspicious I'd say, also note some of the comments on that page, particulary point 7 and the following from point 8, "The banning of imperial measures is designed to deny British companies any ‘natural’ advantage when quoting for American contracts."
• Second [url=ttp://www.usiap.org/Viewpoints/Zhold/StrangeA ... ies13.html]link[/url]. Some quotes from that page:

  Equally disturbing is the fact that this is but a part of a larger, peculiar pattern that mars the Bush Administration's decision to turn a defensive war into an offensive maneuver for the new world order, to turn a defense of the homeland into an assault on constitutional rights and capitalism.
  ...
  Deploying NATO troops on American soil - like the Bush Administration's earlier decision to give the UN Article 7 enforcement powers over all 189 member states, mandating that they join in the war on terrorism, as per the pro-Communist, pro-terrorist United Nations dictates, fits right into the pattern.
  ...
  Europe, for instance, accepts the lex regia perspective on rights which asserts that rights proceed from the state, and thus, can be abridged by the state. Whereas the United States adopts the natural law perspective which proclaims rights proceed from God; that governments exist solely to protect those God-given rights; and that the power to abridge such rights, does not exist. In the former the state is sovereign, in the latter, the individual under God.

  Do I really have to go on?
• Third link. I wasn't aware that Mexico and Latin America are located in Europe, well I guess you learn something new every day.

Perinquus maybe you should try and find the actual section of EU legislation that mandates this "guilty before proven innocent" concept and forces EU nations to adopt it and quote and link to that, rather then providing links to websites that are rather suspect in nature or talk of the wrong continent.

[Perinquus]

From the website of the European Court of Human Rights:

Article 6 – Right to a fair trial...
2 Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

Then they have modified this from the Napoleonic code which was enacted in France in 1811 (the penal code - the civil code dates from 1804), and which was spread throughout Europe and on to other places like Latin America. I am still looking for a translation of the penal code, and all I can find so far is one of the civil code.

The burden of proof being on the accused is a well known feature of the Code Napoleon, however, and is referenced in numerous sources. Louisiana, which is the only state in the U.S. not to use English Common Law, uses the Napoleonic Code, as it was once a French colony, and certain aspects of the Napoleonic Code - burden of proof on the accused among them - had to be amended to bring Louisiana's law into accordance with the U.S. Bill of Rights.

[*]Third link. I wasn't aware that Mexico and Latin America are located in Europe, well I guess you learn something new every day.

Excuse me, I thought we were talking about international law. I wasn't aware that Europe was the world's one and only source for such. Furthermore, we were specifically talking about the Napoleonic Code, which is followed in Latin America as well as much of Europe. The fact that the Code is now practiced in Latin America, having been carried there by the French when they imposed the Emperor Maximillian on Mexico, does not alter the fact that it is still the European Napolonic Code. This little gripe of yours is simple nitpicking.

Perinquus maybe you should try and find the actual section of EU legislation that mandates this "guilty before proven innocent" concept and forces EU nations to adopt it and quote and link to that, rather then providing links to websites that are rather suspect in nature or talk of the wrong continent.

I'm still looking. As soon as I can find a translation of the Code Penal of 1811 I will. And get it through your head, we are talking about the Code Napoleon, which is European law that then spread to other continents during the age of imperialism. It's still the European Napoleonic Code. Just like American Law is still English Common Law. We are talking about the nature of the law itself, what continent it is practiced on does not change this. You are nitpicking.

[Keevan_Colton]

So, basically, you talked some shit about europe that is totally irrelevant and wrong...and now its okay because back when slavery was legal in the US it was that way in europe. Wonderful...

[Sir Sirius]

<Snipped to save space>

From your earlier post in this thread:

In many European countries people have no right to trial by a jury of their peers; in many European countries you are not innocent until proven guilty, but guilty until found innocent; in many European countries (notably England) the right to self defense has largely been legislated away; in more socialist Europe, the government has more regulatory powers over citizens and their private affairs, especially in business.

That statement is what I am talking about, not the Napoleonic Code (which does indeed have a "guilty until proven innocent" practice, something that I've never contested).

And how on Earth is it nitpicking to say that EU doesn't have "guilty until proven innocent" practice, even though many European countries once did? If I claimed that the slavery is legal in the U.S. (after all it once was) would it be a nitpick to point out that the situation has changed?

[Sir Sirius]

Oops. Forgot to say that my interrest in this thread was mostly due to your quote from the first link you gave (EU will make GB adopt the Napoleonic Code). So don't start claiming that you never said that the EU still practices "guilty until proven innocent".

[Perinquus]

Oops. Forgot to say that my interrest in this thread was mostly due to your quote from the first link you gave (EU will make GB adopt the Napoleonic Code). So don't start claiming that you never said that the EU still practices "guilty until proven innocent".

Yeah, I did say that. And the last word I had on the subject led me to believe that was still the case. If they have changed that it has been relatively recently. But when you get right down to it, I don't see how this hurts my case. We had "innocent until proven guilty" centuries ago. The rest of Europe has only come into line with this recently, and I still do not know if Latin America and the rest of the world have come into line with it.

Now if we were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in our laws and concepts of human rights,, if our system led us to these advances sooner than the rest of the world, tell me again why we should dilute that system, and feel constrained to refashion our laws according to the way the rest of the world does things.

[Keevan_Colton]

Centuries ahead in human rights....yeah....get fucking real, europe got rid of slavery before the US did so cram the superiority stuff up your ass.

[Sir Sirius]

<Snipped to save space>

Oh, my interrest in this thread was purely to correct you on the "guilty until proven innocent" issue. I'm not American, you can base your law on anything you want, I don't think that it is my place to tell you how to run your country.

[BoredShirtless]

Now if we were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in our laws and concepts of human rights,,

Prove this. You may have gotten to "innocent until proven guilty" first, but that doesn't mean the rest of your laws and concepts of human rights are "centuries ahead".

if our system led us to these advances sooner than the rest of the world,

Assumption. Prove it.

tell me again why we should dilute that system, and feel constrained to refashion our laws according to the way the rest of the world does things.

Because your country isn't perfect. If the USA was a utopian society, then your fear of "diluting the system" would be understandable.

But the USA isn't perfect, far from it. Now don't be alarmed by the following, but the rest of the world may infact have one or two judicial decisions which made the relative society a better place! Suprising, no?

[Perinquus]

Centuries ahead in human rights....yeah....get fucking real, europe got rid of slavery before the US did so cram the superiority stuff up your ass.

Nice red herring. We're talking about the legal system, not slavery. And so they were ahead in some areas, we in others. What a surprise! I never claimed the U.S. was perfect. In terms of jurisprudence, however, (which is what we are discussing, so try to stay on topic) I maintain that we were ahead - we and the British, from whom we derived our common law - as we had the right to trial by a jury of our peers, instead of a panel of judges, we had habeas corpus, we had burden of proof on the accuser not the accused. We had all this long before most of continental Europe, and in that respect, we were ahead.

[Perinquus]

Now if we were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in our laws and concepts of human rights,,

Prove this. You may have gotten to "innocent until proven guilty" first, but that doesn't mean the rest of your laws and concepts of human rights are "centuries ahead".

if our system led us to these advances sooner than the rest of the world,

Assumption. Prove it.

From the following website:

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/gage/inquis/law.html

Torture was removed from the law code in Saxony between 1770 and 1783. Switzerland and Austria removed torture from their law codes about the same time. In 1762, Empress Catherine removed torture from the jurisdiction of the lower courts and in 1767 restricted the cases in which it could be used and then only with the special permission of the governor of the province. Napoleon removed torture from the law codes of many states in Europe when he conquered them. To their eternal shame, some states readopted torture when Napoleon was driven from their land. Torture continued to disgrace the jurisprudence of Wirtemberg and Bavaria until 1806 and 1807, Hanover (which was ruled by the English king) until 1819, and Baden until 1831.

I think you will find we removed torture from our system of jurisprudence long before these dates. You want proof of the superiority of the English/American system of jurisprudence? I think being far ahead in removing torture from the law books is eloquent proof of that assertion, thank you very much.

tell me again why we should dilute that system, and feel constrained to refashion our laws according to the way the rest of the world does things.

Because your country isn't perfect. If the USA was a utopian society, then your fear of "diluting the system" would be understandable.

But the USA isn't perfect, far from it. Now don't be alarmed by the following, but the rest of the world may infact have one or two judicial decisions which made the relative society a better place! Suprising, no?

The rest of the world has made many contributions, but I remain firm in my conviction that our system of criminal justice was far ahead of that practiced throughout most of the rest of the world until quite recent times, and is still far better than that practiced in many countries unto this day. I also remain firm in my conviction that the business of writing the laws which will govern Americans remains the sovereign right of the American people, and no other.

[Keevan_Colton]

Centuries ahead in human rights....yeah....get fucking real, europe got rid of slavery before the US did so cram the superiority stuff up your ass.

Nice red herring. We're talking about the legal system, not slavery. And so they were ahead in some areas, we in others. What a surprise! I never claimed the U.S. was perfect. In terms of jurisprudence, however, (which is what we are discussing, so try to stay on topic) I maintain that we were ahead - we and the British, from whom we derived our common law - as we had the right to trial by a jury of our peers, instead of a panel of judges, we had habeas corpus, we had burden of proof on the accuser not the accused. We had all this long before most of continental Europe, and in that respect, we were ahead.

I think its you who has to try and keep up, you have already asserted that europe is inferior because of a legal system it no longer has

Need to see your own words again to refresh your memory?

Yeah, I did say that. And the last word I had on the subject led me to believe that was still the case. If they have changed that it has been relatively recently. But when you get right down to it, I don't see how this hurts my case. We had "innocent until proven guilty" centuries ago. The rest of Europe has only come into line with this recently, and I still do not know if Latin America and the rest of the world have come into line with it.

Now if we were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in our laws and concepts of human rights,, if our system led us to these advances sooner than the rest of the world, tell me again why we should dilute that system, and feel constrained to refashion our laws according to the way the rest of the world does things.

You were making the assertion there that the US had superior laws and concepts of human rights despite the fact that it did not abolish slavery (read, make illegal if you want to keep this just law) till after Europe....

So in europe you had to prove your innocence at that time.....and across the atlantic you could be owned......I wonder who had better human rights eh?

As for read herrings I think pretty much all your bullshit about europe features as a wonderful example of that. You are the one asserting the presumtion of innocence isnt in europe, despite the law stating it is, and also claiming the inherent superiority of the US in human rights, which it is far from having.

[Perinquus]

I think its you who has to try and keep up, you have already asserted that europe is inferior because of a legal system it no longer has

Need to see your own words again to refresh your memory?

Yeah, I did say that. And the last word I had on the subject led me to believe that was still the case. If they have changed that it has been relatively recently. But when you get right down to it, I don't see how this hurts my case. We had "innocent until proven guilty" centuries ago. The rest of Europe has only come into line with this recently, and I still do not know if Latin America and the rest of the world have come into line with it.

Now if we were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in our laws and concepts of human rights,, if our system led us to these advances sooner than the rest of the world, tell me again why we should dilute that system, and feel constrained to refashion our laws according to the way the rest of the world does things.

You were making the assertion there that the US had superior laws and concepts of human rights despite the fact that it did not abolish slavery (read, make illegal if you want to keep this just law) till after Europe....

And in Europe you could be held without being charged indefinitely, in Europe there was still divine right of kings, token legislatures that were nothing more than rubber stamps for the monarch, pogroms, secret police, serfdom which endured well into the 19th century in much of Europe, no freedom of the press, etc. Do you really think a European living under the Habsburgs in the 18th or 19th century enjoyed more rights and liberties than an American of the same period? Do you think a Russian intellectual in fear of the Okhrana, or a serf tied to the land like a a slave in all but name was more free than an American? Do you really?

You're goddamn right I think the U.S. had superior laws and concepts of human rights, and slavery was the exception, not the rule - as shown by the fact that more than half the country was so bitterly opposed to it we ended up fighting a bloody, protracted war over it to settle the issue. Or hadn't anyone told you?

So in europe you had to prove your innocence at that time.....and across the atlantic you could be owned......I wonder who had better human rights eh?

Oh I think 18th and 19th century Europe had just a wee bit more wrong with their human rights record back then than that.

As for read herrings I think pretty much all your bullshit about europe features as a wonderful example of that. You are the one asserting the presumtion of innocence isnt in europe, despite the law stating it is, and also claiming the inherent superiority of the US in human rights, which it is far from having.

Perhaps not better than Britain at the time. But certainly better than Austria-Hungary, Czarist Russia, Spain, and numerous smaller states and principalities throughout Europe. And far better than the rest of the world outside Europe.

[Colonel Olrik]

And here I was prying my own business, thinking this thread had nothing to do with me..

Peringuus, you actually sustained the EU law is inferior because it was so an hundred years ago? That seems to be a somewhat flawed position. Things do change with time. You may not believe it, but while the U.S Constitution was a revolutionary document at the time it was written, it is now common stuff and even obsolete here and there, compared with other countries.

I agree with your position that the U.S const. court or whatever must only do what it was elected to do, but your statements about the E.U and its "guilty until proven otherwise" (wtf?) judicial system show only your ignorance about the matter, or arrogance towards the E.U, or both.

edit: thread split from here

[The Duchess of Zeon]

even obsolete here and there, compared with other countries.

Defend that particular statement, please.

[Joe]

Peringuus, you actually sustained the EU law is inferior because it was so an hundred years ago? That seems to be a somewhat flawed position. Things do change with time. You may not believe it, but while the U.S Constitution was a revolutionary document at the time it was written, it is now common stuff and even obsolete here and there, compared with other countries.

The Constitution of the United States of America is older than the constitutions of France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Greece. Put together.

Do not be so quick to praise the law of EU countries. History's verdict isn't in on much of it yet. But it's in on the U.S. Constitution, and it's favorable.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Do not be so quick to praise the law of EU countries. History's verdict isn't in on much of it yet. But it's in on the U.S. Constitution, and it's favorable.

If national stability in a representative government is what you want, the U.S. constitution has certainly provided it; none can deny this. Only autocratic monarchies and the British unwritten constitution have comparable records of stability to the U.S. constitution.

[Colonel Olrik]

Do not be so quick to praise the law of EU countries. History's verdict isn't in on much of it yet. But it's in on the U.S. Constitution, and it's favorable.

That doesn't change the fact that all the essencial guidelines that make the U.S Const. great are present in all E.U Constitutions. It is also true that the U.S Constitution has a few outdated stuff, and since it's not set in marble stone there's no reason why it can't be rearranged to fit modern times.

[Colonel Olrik]

Do not be so quick to praise the law of EU countries. History's verdict isn't in on much of it yet. But it's in on the U.S. Constitution, and it's favorable.

If national stability in a representative government is what you want, the U.S. constitution has certainly provided it; none can deny this. Only autocratic monarchies and the British unwritten constitution have comparable records of stability to the U.S. constitution.

Then History is on Europe's side. Portugal has maintained its borders for more than 800 years

edit: Ooops, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant other thing.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Then History is on Europe's side. Portugal has maintained its borders for more than 800 years

No, it hasn't. You expanded in the War of Spanish Succession.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

edit: Ooops, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant other thing.

No problem. Though you were inaccurate in both cases. *evil grin*

[Colonel Olrik]

Then History is in Europe's side. Portugal has maintained its borders for more than 800 years

No, it hasn't. You expanded in the War of Spanish Succession.

Approximately the same borders, then.

[Colonel Olrik]

even obsolete here and there, compared with other countries.

Defend that particular statement, please.

I was just thinking about the problems originated by age, like the numerous amendments. I don't see why it would be a big deal to rewrite it in a more fluid document.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I was just thinking about the problems originated by age, like the numerous amendments. I don't see why it would be a big deal to rewrite it in a more fluid document.

The amendments fit into the text--I think rewriting the constitution, which would require the (at least temporary) cessation of the American government and could involve drastic changes in the American system, would be far more severe than you think. I couldn't see it happening short of following a military dictatorship. What parts in particular do you think are so inadequate that they require such a necessity?

[Colonel Olrik]

I was just thinking about the problems originated by age, like the numerous amendments. I don't see why it would be a big deal to rewrite it in a more fluid document.

The amendments fit into the text--I think rewriting the constitution, which would require the (at least temporary) cessation of the American government and could involve drastic changes in the American system, would be far more severe than you think. I couldn't see it happening short of following a military dictatorship. What parts in particular do you think are so inadequate that they require such a necessity?

Such a necessity, obviously none. But we've revised our own Constitution here one or two times since 1975 without problems. Why couldn't you just make the modifications you want, make sure they don't change the text meaning and only then put the revised Constitution into place? Of course, giving the trouble we're having here to put into place an E.U Constitution, I realize that the more complex the country, the harder it is to change one of its founding bases. The fact that americans pratically revere the U.S Constitution and Founding Fathers makes it even more complicated.