[dragontamer]

On the other hand, I'm not sure a European style tribunal would have been allowed to settle the case early.

Yes. It's good that the states can serve as a check on the Federal level government. But why can the federal level government give up on cases on a national level? Just because a different party was voted in?

[rossdavidh]

No matter what your politics, sooner or later someone you don't agree with will be in charge at the national level.

There are also cases where states take on cases that the national government never pursues in the first case. IIRC, states pursued the tobacco companies when the national government would not (Democrat or Republican).

Of course, it happens in federal courts, so you also need separate and independent branches at the national level. But states that can act independently are important as well.

[dragontamer]

I think you misunderstand.

Courts in Europe are often older than the countries. Indeed, many "countries" of Europe have governments that only existed since the 1920s, or 1940s (depending on which World War wrecked the old system). Nonetheless, court rulings persisted through that period. So there's a string of independence here that's hard to replicate.

Furthermore, prosecutors are part of the court system over there (not part of the executable branch like here in the USA). IIRC: most European countries are Inquisitorial, rather than Adversarial (like USA).

Finally, because European systems have no "two party system", the "rulers" are rarely one party. Its often a coalition of two different parties, maybe even three parties.

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The USA's adversarial style of prosecutor vs defendant is extremely unique. Both good and bad. One of the bads is that prosecutors will give up on cases that mismatch with the politicians in charge.

But there's many mechanisms that would have prevented this situation from arising in France or Germany.

[danaris]

The problem is that the Department of Justice is part of the Executive Branch, and due to the burgeoning of the Imperial Presidency over the past several decades, that means that as soon as a new President is voted in, he can order the DoJ to change all their priorities to match his.

Our system doesn't have to be this way, even with the federal/state split; it doesn't even have to be this way with the designation of the DoJ as being within the Executive Branch. It's taken a lot of erosion of norms and flagrant breaking of laws to get to the point the US is at now.