Presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence is the legal principle that one is considered innocent unless proven guilty. It was traditionally expressed by non qui negat. In many states, presumption of innocence is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial, it is an international human right under the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must collect and present compelling evidence to the trier of fact; the trier of fact is thus restrained and ordered by law to consider only actual evidence and testimony presented in court. The prosecution must, in most cases prove. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. Under the Justinian Codes and English common law, the accused is presumed innocent in criminal proceedings, in civil proceedings both sides must issue proof; the sixth-century Digest of Justinian provides, as a general rule of evidence: Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat—"Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies".
It is there attributed to third century jurist Paul. It was introduced in Roman criminal law by emperor Antoninus Pius. Similar to that of Roman law, Islamic law holds the principle that the onus of proof is on the accuser or claimant based on a hadith documented by Imam Nawawi. "Suspicion" is highly condemned, this from a hadith documented by Imam Nawawi as well as Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim. After the time of Muhammad, the fourth Caliph Ali ibn Abi Thalib has been cited to say, "Avert the prescribed punishment by rejecting doubtful evidence." After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the West began to practice feudal law, a synthesis of aspects of Roman law as well as some Germanic customs according to the new elite, including presumed guilt. For instance, the accused could prove his innocence by having twelve people swear that he could not have done what he was accused of. In practice, this tended to favor the nobility over the lower classes, whose witnesses risked being seen as less credible.
Following the aforementioned Roman law of Justinian, who lived at the dawn of the medieval era, the Eastern Roman Empire continued along his legal code which includes presumption of innocence. This influenced nearby states within its cultural sphere, such as Orthodox, Slavic principalities like Serbia; the maxim or its equivalent has been adopted by many civil law systems, including Brazil, China,France, Philippines, Poland and Spain. "Presumption of innocence" serves to emphasize that the prosecution has the obligation to prove each element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt and that the accused bears no burden of proof. This is expressed in the phrase "innocent until proven guilty", coined by the British barrister Sir William Garrow during a 1791 trial at the Old Bailey. Garrow insisted. An objective observer in the position of the juror must reasonably conclude that the defendant certainly committed the crime. In 1935, in its judgment of Woolmington v Director of Public Prosecutions, the English Court of Appeal would describe Garrow's articulation as being the'golden thread' connecting both the criminal burden of proof and the presumption of innocence within the web of English criminal law.
The presumption of innocence was expressed by the French cardinal and jurist Jean Lemoine in the phrase "item quilbet presumitur innocens nisi probetur nocens", based on the legal inference that most people are not criminals. However, this referred not to the fact that the burden of proof rests on the prosecution in a criminal case, but the protections which a defendant should be given: prior notice of the accusation being made against them, the right of confrontation, right to counsel, etc, it is considered favorable evidence for the accused that automatically attaches at trial. It requires that the trier of fact, be it a juror or judge, begin with the presumption that the state is unable to support its assertion. To ensure this legal protection is maintained, a set of three related rules govern the procedure of criminal trials; the presumption means: With respect to the critical facts of the case—whether the crime charged was committed and whether the defendant was the person who committed the crime—the state has the entire burden of proof.
With respect to the critical facts of the case, the defendant does not have any burden of proof whatsoever. The defendant does not have to testify, call witnesses or present any other evidence, if the defendant elects not to testify or present evidence, this decision cannot be used against them; the jury or judge is not to draw any negative inferences from the fact the defendant has been charged with a crime and is present in court and represented by an attorney. They must decide the case on evidence presented during the trial; this duty on the prosecution was famously referred to as the “golden thread” in the criminal law by Lord Sankey LC in Woolmington v DPP: Throughout the web of the English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen—that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to what I have said as to the defence of insanity and subject to any statutory exception... This right is so important in modern democracies, constitutional monarchies and republics that many have explicitly included it in thei
Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales is a court in London and one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court. Part of the present building stands on the site of the medieval Newgate gaol, on a road named Old Bailey that follows the line of the City of London's fortified wall, which runs from Ludgate Hill to the junction of Newgate Street and Holborn Viaduct; the Old Bailey has been housed in several structures near this location since the sixteenth century, its present building dates from 1902. The Crown Court sitting at the Central Criminal Court deals with major criminal cases from within Greater London and in exceptional cases, from other parts of England and Wales. Trials at the Old Bailey, as at other courts, are open to the public; the court originated as the sessions house of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of the City of London and of Middlesex. The original medieval court was first mentioned in 1585, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and rebuilt in 1674, with the court open to the weather to prevent the spread of disease.
In 1734, it was refronted, enclosing the court and reducing the influence of spectators: this led to outbreaks of typhus, notably in 1750 when 60 people died, including the Lord Mayor and two judges. It was rebuilt again in 1774 and a second courtroom was added in 1824. Over 100,000 criminal trials were carried out at the Old Bailey between 1674 and 1834. In 1834, it was renamed as the Central Criminal Court and its jurisdiction extended beyond that of London and Middlesex to the whole of the English jurisdiction for trials of major cases, her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service manages the courts and administers the trials but the building itself is owned by the City of London Corporation, which finances the building, the running of it, the staff and the maintenance out of their own resources. The court was intended as the site where only criminals accused of crimes committed in the City and Middlesex were tried. However, in 1856, there was public revulsion at the accusations against the doctor William Palmer that he was a poisoner and murderer.
This led to fears. The Central Criminal Court Act 1856 was passed to enable his trial to be held at the Old Bailey. In the 19th century, the Old Bailey was a courtroom adjacent to Newgate Prison. Hangings were a public spectacle in the street outside until May 1868; the condemned would be led along Dead Man's Walk between the prison and the court, many were buried in the walk itself. Large, riotous crowds would gather and pelt the condemned with rotten fruit and vegetables and stones. In 1807, 28 people were crushed to death. A secret tunnel was subsequently created between the prison and St Sepulchre's church opposite, to allow the chaplain to minister to the condemned man without having to force his way through the crowds; the present Old Bailey building dates from 1902 but it was opened on 27 February 1907. It was designed by E. W. Mountford and built on the site of the infamous Newgate Prison, demolished to allow the court buildings to be constructed. Above the main entrance is inscribed the admonition: "Defend the Children of the Poor & Punish the Wrongdoer".
King Edward VII opened the courthouse. On the dome above the court stands a bronze statue of Lady Justice, executed by the British sculptor F. W. Pomeroy, she holds the scales of justice in her left. The statue is popularly supposed to show blind Justice, the figure is not blindfolded: the courthouse brochures explain that this is because Lady Justice was not blindfolded, because her "maidenly form" is supposed to guarantee her impartiality which renders the blindfold redundant. During the Blitz of World War II, the Old Bailey was bombed and damaged, but subsequent reconstruction work restored most of it in the early 1950s. In 1952, the restored interior of the Grand Hall of the Central Criminal Court was once again open; the interior of the Great Hall is decorated with paintings commemorating the Blitz, as well as quasi-historical scenes of St Paul's Cathedral with nobles outside. Running around the entire hall are a series of axioms, some of biblical reference, they read: "The law of the wise is a fountain of life" "The welfare of the people is supreme" "Right lives by law and law subsists by power" "Poise the cause in justice's equal scales" "Moses gave unto the people the laws of God" "London shall have all its ancient rights"The Great Hall is decorated with many busts and statues, chiefly of British monarchs, but of legal figures, those who achieved renown by campaigning for improvement in prison conditions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
This part of the building houses the shorthand-writers' offices. The lower level hosts a minor exhibition on the history of the Old Bailey and Newgate featuring historical prison artefacts. In 1973, the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional IRA exploded a car bomb in the street outside the courts, killing one and injuring 200 people. A shard of glass is preserved as a reminder, embedded in the wall at the top of the main stairs. Between 1968 and 1972, a new South Block, designed by the architects Donald McMorran and George Whitby, was built to accommodate more modern courts. There are presently 18 courts in use. Court 19 is now used variously as a press overflow facility, as a registra
Common law
In law, common law is that body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals. The defining characteristic of "common law" is. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision. If, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases, legislative statutes are either silent or ambiguous on the question, judges have the authority and duty to resolve the issue; the court states an opinion that gives reasons for the decision, those reasons agglomerate with past decisions as precedent to bind future judges and litigants. Common law, as the body of law made by judges, stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process, regulations which are promulgated by the executive branch.
Stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems. The common law—so named because it was "common" to all the king's courts across England—originated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066; the British Empire spread the English legal system to its historical colonies, many of which retain the common law system today. These "common law systems" are legal systems that give great precedential weight to common law, to the style of reasoning inherited from the English legal system. Today, one-third of the world's population lives in common law jurisdictions or in systems mixed with civil law, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Cyprus, Fiji, Grenada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Liberia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Namibia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Tobago, the United Kingdom, the United States, Zimbabwe.
Some of these countries have variants on common law systems. The term common law has many connotations; the first three set out here are the most-common usages within the legal community. Other connotations from past centuries are sometimes seen and are sometimes heard in everyday speech; the first definition of "common law" given in Black's Law Dictionary, 10th edition, 2014, is "The body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions. This usage is given as the first definition in modern legal dictionaries, is characterized as the “most common” usage among legal professionals, is the usage seen in decisions of courts. In this connotation, "common law" distinguishes the authority. For example, the law in most Anglo-American jurisdictions includes "statutory law" enacted by a legislature, "regulatory law" or “delegated legislation” promulgated by executive branch agencies pursuant to delegation of rule-making authority from the legislature, common law or "case law", i.e. decisions issued by courts.
This first connotation can be further differentiated into pure common law arising from the traditional and inherent authority of courts to define what the law is in the absence of an underlying statute or regulation. Examples include most criminal law and procedural law before the 20th century, today, most contract law and the law of torts. Interstitial common law court decisions that analyze and determine the fine boundaries and distinctions in law promulgated by other bodies; this body of common law, sometimes called "interstitial common law", includes judicial interpretation of the Constitution, of legislative statutes, of agency regulations, the application of law to specific facts. Publication of decisions, indexing, is essential to the development of common law, thus governments and private publishers publish law reports. While all decisions in common law jurisdictions are precedent, some become "leading cases" or "landmark decisions" that are cited often. Black's Law Dictionary 10th Ed. definition 2, differentiates "common law" jurisdictions and legal systems from "civil law" or "code" jurisdictions.
Common law systems place great weight on court decisions, which are considered "law" with the same force of law as statutes—for nearly a millennium, common law courts have had the authority to make law where no legislative statute exists, statutes mean what courts interpret them to mean. By contrast, in civil law jurisdictions, courts lack authority to act. Civil law judges tend to give less weight to judicial precedent, which means that a
California
California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U. S. the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento; the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, the country's second most populous, after New York City. California has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, its largest county by area, San Bernardino County; the City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. California's $3.0 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state, larger than those of Texas and Florida combined, the largest sub-national economy in the world. If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world, the 36th most populous as of 2017.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies, after the New York metropolitan area. The San Francisco Bay Area PSA had the nation's highest GDP per capita in 2017 among large PSAs, is home to three of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people. California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation and politics, it is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, fast food, the Internet, the personal computer, among others. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are seen as global centers of the technology and entertainment industries, respectively. California has a diverse economy: 58% of the state's economy is centered on finance, real estate services and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.
S. state. California is bordered by Oregon to the north and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; the state's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains. Over time and wildfires have become more pervasive features. What is now California was first settled by various Native Californian tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries; the Spanish Empire claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its successful war for independence but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The western portion of Alta California was organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850. The California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom; the word California referred to the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. The name derived from the mythical island California in the fictional story of Queen Calafia, as recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo; this work was the fifth in a popular Spanish chivalric romance series that began with Amadis de Gaula. Queen Calafia's kingdom was said to be a remote land rich in gold and pearls, inhabited by beautiful black women who wore gold armor and lived like Amazons, as well as griffins and other strange beasts. In the fictional paradise, the ruler Queen Calafia fought alongside Muslims and her name may have been chosen to echo the title of a Muslim leader, the Caliph. It's possible.
Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, inhabited by black women without a single man among them, they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with great virtue; the island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the craggy rocks. Shortened forms of the state's name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000; the Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups were diverse in their political organization with bands, villages, on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash and Salinan.
Trade, intermarriage a
Jean II, Duke of Alençon
John II of Alençon was the son of John I of Alençon and his wife Marie of Brittany, Lady of La Guerche, daughter of John V, Duke of Brittany and Joan of Navarre. He succeeded his father as Duke of Alençon and Count of Perche as a minor in 1415, after the latter's death at the Battle of Agincourt, he is best known as a general in the Last Phase of the Hundred Years' War and for his role as a comrade-in-arms of Joan of Arc, who called him "le beau duc". He saw action at the age of fifteen at the Battle of Verneuil on 17 August 1424, was captured by the English, he was held prisoner until 1429 at Le Crotoy. He sold all he possessed to the English, his fief of Fougères to the Duke of Brittany. After Alençon's capture, the Duke of Bedford, regent of Henry VI, took control of his duchy, he would not regain Alençon until 1449, but remained the titular duke in the eyes of the French crown. When he left prison, Jean d'Alençon was called "the poorest man in France". Before his capture at Verneuil, he had married in 1424, at the Chateau de Blois, Jeanne of Valois, daughter of Charles, duc d'Orléans and Isabella of Valois, but she died in Angers in 1432, having given him no children.
In April 1429, not long after his release, the duke heard about Joan of Arc, who had come to Charles VII at Chinon, promising to liberate France from the English, asking that he send her with an army to lift the Siege of Orléans. Alençon came eagerly to Chinon and quickly became her good friend and most prominent supporter among the princes of the blood. After she raised the siege alongside Jean de Dunois and La Hire among others, Alençon arrived as official commander of the French army and played a major role in the liberation of the rest of the Loire Valley, he left to fight elsewhere after the end of the campaign in September 1429, preferring to attack the English around his own domains in Normandy. Upon Joan's martyrdom on 30 May 1431, when she was burnt at the stake by the English at Rouen, Alençon was one of the people most devastated by the loss. On 30 April 1437, at the Chateau L'Isle-Jourdain, he married Marie of Armagnac, daughter of Jean IV of Armagnac. John was discontented with the Treaty of Arras, having hoped to make good his poverty through the spoliation of the Burgundians.
He fell out with Charles VII, took part in a revolt in 1439–40, but was forgiven, having been a lifelong friend of the king. He took part in the invasion of Normandy in 1449, but he had unwisely entered into correspondence with the English since 1440. Shortly after testifying at the "rehabilitation trial" of Joan of Arc in 1456, he was arrested by Jean de Dunois and imprisoned at Aigues-Mortes. In 1458, he was convicted of lèse-majesté and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted and he was imprisoned at Loches, he was released by Louis XI upon terms at his accession in 1461, but he refused to keep them and was imprisoned again. He was tried a second time before the Parlement of Paris and sentenced to death again on 18 July 1474, his Duchy was confiscated. However, the sentence was not carried out, he died in prison in the Louvre in 1476, he had two children by his second wife, Marie: Catherine, married 1461 in Tours François Guy XV de Laval René of Alençon, who would regain his father's confiscated titles of Duke of Alençon and Count of Perche in 1478He had several illegitimate children: John Robert Jeanne, Countess of Beaumont-le-Roger, married in 1470 Guy de Maulmont Madeleine, married Henri de Breuil http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/compgns.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090321045721/http://futura-dtp.dk/SLAG/Personer/NavneA/AlenconDuc.htm http://www.maidofheaven.com/joanofarc_alencon.asp
Examining magistrate
In an inquisitorial system of law, the examining magistrate, is a judge who carries out pre-trial investigations into allegations of crime and in some cases makes a recommendation for prosecution. The exact role and standing of examining magistrates varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Examining magistrates have an important role in the French judiciary, are a feature of the Spanish, Dutch and Greek criminal justice systems, although the extent of the examining magistrate's role has diminished over time. Several countries, including Switzerland, Germany and Italy, have abolished the position of examining magistrate outright. John Henry Merryman and Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo have described the examining magistrate's role in civil-law systems as follows: The typical criminal proceeding in the civil law world can be thought of as divided into three basic parts: the investigative phase, the examining phase, the trial; the investigative phase comes under the direction of the public prosecutor, who participates in the examining phase, supervised by the examining judge.
The examining phase is written and is not public. The examining judge controls the scope of this phase of the proceeding; the examining judge is expected to investigate the matter and to prepare a complete written record, so that by the time the examining stage is complete, all the relevant evidence is in the record. If the examining judge concludes that a crime was committed and that the accused is the perpetrator, the case goes to trial. If the judge decides that no crime was committed or was that the crime was not committed by the accused, the matter does not go to trial; the role of the examining magistrate is important in civil-law jurisdictions such as France, which have an inquisitorial system. In contrast, common-law jurisdictions such as England and the United States have an adversarial system and lack a comparable official. Frequent close interaction with police and prosecutors "may well condition examining magistrates to favor the long-term interests of regular participants over those of the accused."
This problem affects common-law jurisdictions, although it has been noted that "in the United States, the focus of concern has been the independence of counsel for the defense, while in France, concern focuses on the independence of the examining magistrate."The examination phase has been described as "the most controversial aspect of criminal procedure" in civil-law jurisdictions because of "he secrecy and length of the proceedings, the large powers enjoyed by examining magistrates" and "the possibility for abuse inherent in the power of the individual magistrate to work in secret and to keep people incarcerated for long periods." Some commentators, have compared the examining magistrate's role favorably to that of the grand jury in common-law systems. Scholar George C. Thomas III finds that while the grand jury as it exists in U. S. law is an effective investigative function, it lacks the screening functions that the French system has. Thomas notes that under U. S. Supreme Court precedent, U.
S. prosecutors are not obliged to present exculpatory evidence to grand juries, as a result grand jurors hear only evidence from the prosecution. Use of the examining magistrate has declined in Europe over time. Spain, Croatia, the Netherlands and Greece are among the countries to retain the practice, in all of these nations the examining magistrate's role has been diminished, with a general trend of restricting the examining magistrate's involvement to only "serious crimes or sensitive cases" or having the examining magistrate share responsibility with the public prosecutor. Switzerland, Germany and Italy have all abolished the examining-magistrate system. In France, the investigative judge has been a feature of the judicial system since the mid-19th century, the preliminary investigative procedure has been a part of the judicial system from at least the 17th century; the sweeping powers traditionally entrusted to the juge d'instruction were so broad that Honoré de Balzac called the examining magistrate "the most powerful man in France" in the 19th century.
In a celebrated although exaggerated passage, Balzac wrote that "No human authority, neither the king nor the minister of justice nor the prime minister can intrude on the power of the examining magistrate, no one can stop him, nobody gives him orders. He is sovereign, obeying only his conscience and the law."Later, the authority of the examining magistrates in France diminished in a series of reforms. In 1985, French justice minister Robert Badinter proposed limiting the examining magistrate's role in making custody decisions. In 1990, Justice Minister Pierre Arpaillange convened a Human Rights Commission, led by the legal scholar Mireille Delmas-Marty; the commission concluded that France's criminal procedure code violated human rights standards, noting that the examining magistrate combined investigative and judicial powers in a single
Tribunal
A tribunal is any person or institution with authority to judge, adjudicate on, or determine claims or disputes—whether or not it is called a tribunal in its title. For example, an advocate who appears before a court with a single judge could describe that judge as'their tribunal'. Many governmental bodies that are titled'tribunals' are so described to emphasize that they are not courts of normal jurisdiction. For example, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is a body specially constituted under international law. In many cases, the word tribunal implies a judicial body with a lesser degree of formality than a court, to which the normal rules of evidence and procedure may not apply, whose presiding officers are neither judges nor magistrates. Private judicial bodies are often styled'tribunals'. However, the word tribunal is not conclusive of a body's function–for example, in Great Britain, the Employment Appeal Tribunal is a superior court of record; the term is derived from magistrates of the Classical Roman Republic.
"Tribunal" referred to the office of the tribunes, the term is still sometimes used in this sense in historical writings. In the Republic of Ireland, tribunal popularly refers to a public inquiry established under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1921; the main difference between a Parliamentary Inquiry and a Tribunal of Inquiry in Ireland is that non-statutory inquiries are not vested with the powers and rights of the High Court. Tribunals of Inquiry are. Tribunals are established by resolution of the Houses of the Oireachtas to enquire into matters of urgent public importance, it is not a function of Tribunals to administer justice, their work is inquisitorial. Tribunals are obliged to report their findings to the Oireachtas, they have the power to enforce the attendance and examination of witnesses and the production of documents relevant to the work in hand. Tribunals can consist of one or more people. A layperson, or non-lawyer, may be the Sole member of a tribunal; the tribunal system of the United Kingdom is part of the national system of administrative justice.
Though it has grown up on an ad hoc basis since the beginning of the twentieth century, from 2007 reforms were put in place to build a unified system with recognised judicial authority, routes of appeal and regulatory supervision. In the Netherlands, before the separation of lawmaking, law enforcement, justice duties, all sentences were delivered by a tribunal of seven schepenen or magistrates, appointed by the local count; such a tribunal was called a Vierschaar, so called for a rope -or cord -, drawn In a four-square dimension, wherein the judges took place on four benches. These benches were positioned in a square as well with the defendant standing in the middle. Towns had the Vierschaar privilege to hear their own disputes; the Vierschaar was located in the town hall, many historic town halls still have such a room decorated with scenes from the Judgment of Solomon. There are tribunals for settling various administrative and tax-related disputes, including Central Administrative Tribunal, Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Customs and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, National Green Tribunal, Competition Appellate Tribunal and Securities Appellate Tribunal, among others.
In several states, Food Safety Appellate Tribunals have been created to hear appeals against orders of adjudicating officers for food safety. Armed Forces Tribunal is a military tribunal in India, it was established under the Armed Forces Tribunal Act, 2007. The following tribunals exist within the Judiciary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China: Lands, Small Claims, Obscene Articles. For public inquiries, commissions are set up instead, under the Commissions of Inquiry Ordinance. In the Roman Catholic Church, a tribunal refers to one of three instances of ecclesiastical courts: a diocesan tribunal a provincial tribunal, that is, of more than one diocese and referred to as an appellate court, or the Sacra Rota Romana, or Sacred Roman Rota, the highest court of appeals. In Australia, the term tribunal implies a judicial body with a lesser degree of formality than a court, with a simplified legal procedure presided over by a lawyer, not a judge or magistrate.
In many cases the lawyers who function as tribunal members do so only on a part time basis, spend the greater part of their time carrying out other aspects of legal practice, such as representing clients. In many cases, the formal rules of evidence which apply in courts do not apply in tribunals, which enables tribunals to hear forms of evidence which courts may not be allowed to consider. Tribunals deal with simpler matters. Appeal from a tribunal is to a court. Tribunals in the Australian judicial system include: Administrative Appeals Tribunal Migration Review Tribunal New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal South Australian Civil and Administration Tribunal In
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