this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Good. Civil court is where they're most vulnerable, this is called tort law.
In criminal cases, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers. In a civil lawsuit, the defendant is only innocent until a judge, or jury, depending thinks they're 51% likely to be guilty, what they call the preponderance of evidence.
In other words, "probably" is good enough when you sue someone. It is not good enough if the state is trying to throw you in prison. This makes it more efficient to process the 99% of civil court cases, which are usually just dumb shit, like which of these two arguing neighbors needs to pay for having a tree on their property line cut down or something. It also results in our civil system being a very effective weapon though, as a lot of wealthier and more powerful people know pretty well.
edit for italics
edit2: If anyone doubts me you can just google "tort" and read all about our American system on wikipedia, or any number of other places.
edit3: juries in civil too.
I don't really know why you emphasized judge. Jury trials are very common in civil cases. This will be a pretrial dismissal or summary judgement without a jury, however. There's nothing to discover or evidence to review that's contested.
True, jury trials are common in civil. They're just not the majority, and I'm trying to draw a simplified picture I suppose. It'll edit it again.