The editor of the European Journal of International Law, who is an American by the name of Joseph Weilers, a distinguished jurist, has been criminally accused of libel in France by an Israeli author of a book on the International Criminal Court who was dissatisfied with a negative review of her book in the journal, and on the associated US WWW site, by a German academic jurist.
Easiest intro with links is
Jonathan Zittrain's short comment Friday.
The phenomenon is of profound interest to people such as myself, because, as Prof. Weilers says, it challenges the basic tenets of academic freedom to say what you think (as long as it is what you think) and be judged only by peers and public. I mention this only in passing - I am not going to defend this here, because it is only peripherally relevant to piloting, although, if you delete the word "academic", the principle is central to the premiss of this WWW site.
The reason I am posting the link here is that there has been considerable discussion, and considerable misunderstanding, of the French legal system, which is Inquisitorial, on this thread, in commentary about the Concorde trial.
First, on misunderstanding procedure. "Inquisitorial" means that there is no independent agency, such as the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK, the State or US Attorney General's office in the US, or the Staatsanwaltschaft in Germany, which examines a case on its merits and decides to prosecute or not before the courts are involved, but that the court itself undertakes this examination. It turns out to be costly to the plaintiff; if a complaint is found without merit by the CPS, AG, or SAWS there is no direct cost to the person accused for this investigation and its decision not to proceed (although there are the costs of retaining one's personal legal advisor to assist).
A second misunderstanding concerned competence and efficacy. Joseph Weiler
reports here his experiences. Note in particular
Originally Posted by Weiler in EJIL
The trial was impeccable by any standard with which I am familiar......It was a strange mélange of the criminal and civil virtually unknown in the Common Law world. The procedure was less formal, aimed at establishing the truth, and far less hemmed down by rules of evidence and procedure. Due process was definitely served. It was a fair trial.
Recall this is the judgement of someone tenured at Harvard Law and NYU, who has advised governments on four continents and arbitrated disputes between so-called "super-powers". (I do recommend a quick perusal of the material linked by Zittrain; it doesn't take long.)
The importance of establishing a better understanding of the French legal system is that criminalisation of aviation accidents is an important, and regrettably globally increasing phenomenon of which France is supposed, with cause, to be in the forefront. Any revision of this phenomenon is, to my mind, likely to start with a reappraisal of French legal procedures - their comparative advantages as well as disadvantages. It is not going to proceed along the lines proposed here by some ignorant commentators who simply abuse the French system.
I believe that all of us on this site, including of course the lawyers, have a profound interest in helping to decriminalise aviation accidents.
PBL