and a lot of guarantees like right against self incrimination are also not available in civil law systems. What is the reason behind this? It is said that the stakes are much lower in civil cases, but how is that?
I mean civil cases in common law systems. I misunderstood that a country can have multiple legal systems since its stated that my country (India) has a mixed legal system
I understand that by "civil law systems" the OP means to refer to civil (vs criminal) cases, not to the civil law (vs common law) systems.
The standard for proof of "guilt" (which is not actually called "guilt") is indeed "much lower" in civil cases, but the reason for that is not that it has to be so, but that the standard of proof in criminal cases has to be much higher.
In civil cases none of the parties face criminal conviction. One party will just lose some money or property, will have to perform some work, will lose some opportunities etc. So, initially, both parties play the same game and each of them is in to lose it down to a similar level of peril.
What follows is that, at the baseline, neither of the two parties should be in more advantageous position to prove their rightness than the other. In other words, if any of them proves that they are more than 50% likely to be right than the other, they should win.
Indeed, why would one party have to prove their rightness beyond reasonable doubt? If it was so, it would mean that the other party would effectively have to prove their rightness to only a small degree, which would be utterly unjust.
lot of guarentees like right avainst self incrimination are also not available in civil law systems. what is the reason behind this ?
False. If saying something from a witness stand would risk you being prosecuted, you can refuse to say it regardless of whether you are giving evidence in a civil or a criminal case.
One problem is that "civil law" can mean "Roman-like law" as exists in France, Germany etc, or it can mean, in common law jurisdictions, non-criminal cases i.e. lawsuits. In common-law jurisdictions, there are distinct burdens of proof for reaching a verdict: "beyond reasonable doubt" for criminal cases, vs. "preponderance of evidence" for civil cases. The fundamental reason for this is that is was a feature of English law, and common law was inherited by the various colonies, which did not decide to abandon their legal system. The current shape of that principle is highly influenced by Blackstone, who suggested a seat of the pants statistical view (the "Blackstone ratio") that you can translate into a probability of error in wrongly convicting a person.
This article discusses civil law systems vs. common law systems, noting that civil law systems call for a judge to have an inner, deep-seated personal conviction, which applies to all cases. That basically means that in civil law systems, it is harder to sue someone than in common law systems. It is thus not clear whether civil law systems make it easier to convict for a criminal charge: the author of the article suggests that it does not, and the difference lies in higher standards of proof for civil cases in civil-law systems.
In a criminal case, the defendant faces the possibility of loss of life or freedom. The legal system treats this as a far more serious consequence than the loss of property associated with civil cases, so it insists on a higher threshold before imposing those sanctions.
In a criminal case, it’s you against the state. In a civil case, it’s one citizen against another. So in a civil case, both sides should be treated equal. Say I claim you damaged my car. One of us has to pay the repair because it doesn’t repair itself. If we meet in court, the judge cannot just decide that you pay or you don’t pay, he or she has to decide which one of us pays for the damage. We are both in the same situation, so the amount of evidence needed should be the same.
That’s different in criminal court. The prosecutor won’t go to jail if you are found “not guilty beyond reasonable doubt”.
The correct question is why is the standard of proof much higher in criminal cases?
The independent jury that decides guilt or innocence is a relatively recent phenomena; early juries were as witnesses and investigators as they were decision makers. It is in this transition that the “beyond reasonable doubt” formula came to be.
Why it is this way is both unknown and historically contested.
One school of thought holds that it arises from the seventeenth century view that there are three levels of knowledge: the physical - what you have personally sensed, the mathematical - things that can be actually proved, and the moral - what you believe from what you are told. Since an independent jury can’t rely on either the first or the third, they have to use the moral. If you have doubt, then that is a sign that you have not made the right or moral decision.
Another school holds that it is there to protect the jury in capital cases. The rule as it originally arose is to protect the souls of the jury from condemning a possibly innocent person to death. It was a theological doctrine that if you believed “beyond reasonable doubt”, because doubt came from the conscience, then, even if you were wrong you could convict without risking eternal damnation.
The first use of the actual phrase “beyond reasonable doubt” is in the 1770 Boston Massacre trials. However, it is clear that the concept wasn’t new as the judge emphasised that this was according to traditional English law.
Since then, Enlightenment ideals of “inalienable rights” have shifted the reason for the standard. It’s now about protecting the rights of the accused but that’s a reason for keeping it. The fact that its been there for more than 300 years is another reason for keeping it.
Neither issue arose in civil trials because there the decision is between competing rights.
