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"That's always bothered me too. I think someone should be forced to admit to wrongdoing, or else keep battling in court to prove their side. " God no. For sta

"That's always bothered me too. I think someone should be forced to admit to wrongdoing, or else keep battling in court to prove their side. " God no. For starters, civil litigation does not have a goal of proving right or wrong, but settling disputes between two parties. This is actually a good thing. But what you are suggesting goes against the very basis of civil litigation systems :). You see the same thing in say, divorces. People fight in court because they want a judge to tell them they are right and their ex is wrong, and mostly the judges tell them to grow up and act like adults. One reason it's a good thing is that it enables you to use lower evidence standards to resolve disputes. Most civil lawsuits (at least in the US) are preponderance of the evidence as a result - whose evidence is slightly better. This isn't always true, mind, you, but the point is that the goal of the system overall is to resolve disputes, hopefully efficiently and reasonably. If you are looking for a system to decide who is right, that would be a very different system, and a very scary one at that, IMHO. It would also, among other things, take ~forever to resolve anything, and be even higher cost. You would be raising the stakes dramatically - everyone would be much less willing to settle, and much more willing to fight about every little thing. I'm not sure who or what such a system would serve. In reality, you want as few people in civil court as possible, for as short a time as possible. It is an amazingly high over head way to resolve a dispute, and the vast majority of disputes simply don't need it. IE if you broke a simply contract with someone, it should not take 10 years, a judge, and a jury, to come to an agreement on how much to pay for it. Serving some greater end would be a bad mismatch for how it was built, because in most cases, the main type of relief is monetary. I am hedging in various places because there are specific laws and statutes that grant courts specific powers/remedies for certain types of cases. Absent that, it is expect that monetary relief is the primary form of relief, and forcing people to do things only happens in the rare case money doesn't work. The system actually sucks (relatively) for those other types of cases too because it wasn't really built for it. We've built special courts here and there to try to make up for it.

thrwawy74 4y ago
I think the courts are meant to settle disputes quickly, not justly. The appearance of swift justice.
- chongli 4y ago
  Read Plato's Republic. Justice is an extremely fraught concept that has been debated for millennia. The ultimate purpose of courts is to keep society running smoothly, not uphold justice. Justice can never really be upheld because people disagree on its definition. That would be like trying to get everyone to agree on the best ice cream flavour.
- DannyBee 4y ago
  Justice is not a well shared concept, so that's basically impossible anyway. Beyond that, this is actually right. For civil disputes, the main historical goal has always been compensation for injuries/damages. That's it. Speed is actually a goal because you want people to be put back into a good place as fast as possible. Otherwise, the goal of a number is reasonable. Not perfect. Just reasonable. Again, it's a dispute resolving system. One that was mainly meant to be used when all other forms of negotiation/mediation fail. So it was not meant as a system of first resort, it's a system of last resort. Trying to use it for social change/et al is a relatively new concept. The ability for a corporation or whatever to cause widespread injury to a large class of people is a relatively new thing. As a result, mass torts were historically uncommon, etc. Like maybe a building fell down or something, but even if someone sued someone else because all their cattle died after their neighbor seemed to put something in the water didn't affect (and couldn't be detected to affect) anywhere near as many people as happens now.
  - thrwawy74 4y ago
    Thanks for articulating this. I hadn't thought about how using the courts for social change is a relatively new thing (maybe since the civil rights act in the ~60s).
scotty79 4y ago
> You see the same thing in say, divorces. People fight in court because they want a judge to tell them they are right and their ex is wrong, and mostly the judges tell them to grow up and act like adults. From what I heard juges say nothing. Meanwhile lawers of both sides drain money from them until one of the sides concludes that it's not worth to continue.
- DannyBee 4y ago
  Without breaking confidentiality, this is not my experience. That isn't to say it doesn't happen - states are very different, but at least in the states and areas i've seen it (CA, NY, MD, DC, VA), judges were pretty aggressive at telling people to stop wasting their time and mediate it out instead. Again, I can even buy that you may see differences between say NYC and Albany, but at least what i saw was pretty consistent. The family law judges did not have a lot of tolerance for adults pissing on each other, and made it clear they wanted parties to resolve most things without them.

thrwawy74 4y ago

I think the courts are meant to settle disputes quickly, not justly. The appearance of swift justice.

chongli 4y ago
Read Plato's Republic. Justice is an extremely fraught concept that has been debated for millennia. The ultimate purpose of courts is to keep society running smoothly, not uphold justice. Justice can never really be upheld because people disagree on its definition. That would be like trying to get everyone to agree on the best ice cream flavour.
DannyBee 4y ago
Justice is not a well shared concept, so that's basically impossible anyway. Beyond that, this is actually right. For civil disputes, the main historical goal has always been compensation for injuries/damages. That's it. Speed is actually a goal because you want people to be put back into a good place as fast as possible. Otherwise, the goal of a number is reasonable. Not perfect. Just reasonable. Again, it's a dispute resolving system. One that was mainly meant to be used when all other forms of negotiation/mediation fail. So it was not meant as a system of first resort, it's a system of last resort. Trying to use it for social change/et al is a relatively new concept. The ability for a corporation or whatever to cause widespread injury to a large class of people is a relatively new thing. As a result, mass torts were historically uncommon, etc. Like maybe a building fell down or something, but even if someone sued someone else because all their cattle died after their neighbor seemed to put something in the water didn't affect (and couldn't be detected to affect) anywhere near as many people as happens now.
- thrwawy74 4y ago
  Thanks for articulating this. I hadn't thought about how using the courts for social change is a relatively new thing (maybe since the civil rights act in the ~60s).

scotty79 4y ago

> You see the same thing in say, divorces. People fight in court because they want a judge to tell them they are right and their ex is wrong, and mostly the judges tell them to grow up and act like adults. From what I heard juges say nothing. Meanwhile lawers of both sides drain money from them until one of the sides concludes that it's not worth to continue.

DannyBee 4y ago
Without breaking confidentiality, this is not my experience. That isn't to say it doesn't happen - states are very different, but at least in the states and areas i've seen it (CA, NY, MD, DC, VA), judges were pretty aggressive at telling people to stop wasting their time and mediate it out instead. Again, I can even buy that you may see differences between say NYC and Albany, but at least what i saw was pretty consistent. The family law judges did not have a lot of tolerance for adults pissing on each other, and made it clear they wanted parties to resolve most things without them.