[Tomte]

Of course, it was just an example to show you Americans that things work differently here.

I don't know how on earth you could misinterpret my comment as having anything to do with common law. I was describing the difference in German procedural law between the court as an active fact-finding organ in criminal cases and a passive organ in civil cases, deciding upon facts offered by the parties (and only those).

I think you're mixing something up.

[bkuhn]

You're conflating a lot of different issues. Anyway, the example you started with would likely work similarly in the USA. You'd have to provide a lot more detail to actually show the the difference that it seems you're trying to show.

There are strong rules of evidences in common law systems as well, and the Court expects the parties to introduce evidence; I don't know of any Court that goes seeking evidence that wasn't provided.

In the USA, we talk of jury's as "fact fiinders", but their job is to only consider the evidence before them (possibly conflicting, as it comes adversarially from both sides), and find what's true. But no one in this process other than the parties in civil litigation bring evidence forward.

So, the specific distinction you're trying to make isn't really a distinction between the two systems. I agree with you that there are huge differences in various ways.

My guess at what you're trying to point out is that there is no discovery process in Germany and elsewhere, which is certainly true and is relevant to this discussion, and makes the evidentiary systems very different in practice.

Interestingly, Richard Fontana just told me today a piece of history I didn't know: the USA didn't have discovery in civil cases until the early 20th century, apparently.