Ancient Greece Legal System
In 2016, the electoral system was moved to a form of “simple” proportional representation that replaces traditional “enhanced” proportional representation. However, after the 2020 elections, the electoral system returned to traditional “enhanced” proportional representation, with minor changes to the bonus system. Law 4406/2020 will bring a new way of distributing seats (from the next elections). Depending on the final percentage that the first party receives, the number of bonus seats varies from 20 to 50. The basic condition for the bonus is that the first party has a percentage above 25% and receives an additional seat for every 0.5%. In practice, a party that receives 25% receives 20 additional seats and for each half-unit one seat up to a maximum of 30. Law 4406/2016 changed the voting age from 18 to 17. In order to have the right sentences carried out, the Athenians needed a system to convict and convict the guilty. That was the beginning of the democratic justice system we know today. At that time, there were no professional lawyers. Court officials were not paid much and most of the trials ended on the same day. Further evidence of the ancient Athenian law comes from statements in surviving speeches of Attic speakers and surviving inscriptions. [1] In Against Androtion (22:25-27), Demosthenes stops to give a lecture on a question of Athenian legal theory: Why did Solon – to whom he attributes the conception of laws – establish several legal procedures for a single crime? Demosthenes explains that Solon established different modes of reparation that were appropriate for the different types of Athenians who may have had to be prosecuted.
For example, there have been high-profile and risky procedures for the rich and confident, and low-risk procedures for the poor and insecure. This statement certainly aligns well with recent theories that emphasize the procedural and ideological protection of the rights of poor citizens in Athenian democracy.4 But in his textbook “Offense and Procedure in Athenian Law,” Christopher Carey warns that “there is a danger when confronted with an elegant and seductive model that recalcitrant details will lose their place in the sun” (114). First of all, Demosthenes defends this theory not to educate the jury, but to its advantage in this case (112-113). In fact, when Hymerides has the opportunity to reflect on the variety of judicial procedures, it implies that the trial depends on the nature of the crime (114 on Hyperids 3:4-6). Carey reviews all confirmed trials and charges to determine how true Demosthenes` generalization is. He concludes that “procedural flexibility was a less pervasive feature of the Athenian system than an innocent reading of Demosthenes suggests” (129). Many crimes could only be prosecuted by γραφή (a public indictment); others were subject to only one δίκη (private costs). If there was a choice, it depended not only on the prosecutor`s preference, but also on the “circumstances of the mission, the circumstances of the discovery or the time of the intervention” (129).
While Carey acknowledges some procedural flexibility, particularly in the sense of a low-risk “pullback” procedure, Carey acknowledges that this could provide some reparation to the poor and weak (130-131). He concludes by arguing that maintaining different procedures for a single crime was probably not only an unintended result of the accumulation of laws, but that there is probably a complex rather than a single explanation as presented by Demosthenes. In the introduction, Harris and Rubinstein placed the collection in the context of two related issues. First, the ideal of the rule of law has been widely affirmed, but it is not clear whether the Athenian courts we know best were primarily concerned with applying the law to specific cases. Renowned scholars have argued that Athenian trials were “competitions in which members of the elite competed for honor and status, often through a declaration of their allegiance to democratic ideology and a demonstration of wealth allegedly expended by litigants for the benefit of the community” (2). As I mentioned earlier, essays in the Athenian sections (II and III) tend to undermine the evidence on which the most extravagant views are based. Harris and Rubenstein also raise a second possible objection to a strongly political view of the courts: if the courts were so essentially political, shouldn`t the legal system have had a different face in oligarchic and democratic states? Harris and Rubenstein suggest that looking at the law outside of Athens is not only important in itself, but can also help us evaluate the arguments about Athenian law. The rest of the introduction summarizes the following chapters. The third determining factor for Greek law was the absence of jurisprudence comparable to that of the Romans. Even the Attic speakers, for all their practical familiarity with the laws of the city, were primarily interested in presenting arguments capable of convincing the mass jurors before whom they had to argue, rather than analyzing the legal system to better understand its implications.
Moreover, philosophers did not care about the law as it was, and their goal was the discovery of abstract norms of justice. The judicial system that exists in America has its roots in the ancient Greek legal system. In ancient Greece, it was not necessary to study law because lawyers were not part of the legal system. Instead of having a lawyer representing each party in a case, people pleaded their case. Some people with sufficient resources may have hired speechwriters to know what to say when arguing a case. The ancient Greeks also did not use judges to render judgments. Instead, they used grand juries, sometimes with up to 500 jurors. Cases were not delayed for days or weeks in ancient Greece: the Greeks closely followed the process with a timer to ensure that the parties presented their positions and that the jury announced its verdict at the end of a day. The most famous Greek judicial system is the classical Athens of the 4th century, traditionally associated with the birth of democracy. It was mainly abstract philosophical ideas around law and justice that had the greatest impact on later societies, rather than the practical aspects of the legal system itself.
While its older forms can be studied through Gortyn`s laws, its influence can be traced back to legal documents preserved in Egyptian papyri, and it can be recognized as a coherent whole in its definitive relations with Roman law in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, with scholars in the discipline of comparative law recognizing Greek law with Roman law and the primitive institutions of the the Germanic Nations. [1] The three characteristics described here have had an important influence on the general character of Greek law. The first two of these factors led to a rather rigid positivism. Contrary to the opinions held by scholars until recently, new research has shown that the Athenian dicasters who sat on the court did not feel free to base their judgments on vague notions of justice, but at least theoretically adhered to the literal meaning of written laws (nomoi), which they were obliged to abide by a solemn oath. This somewhat narrow adherence to literal interpretation, combined with the absence of any attempt to deal analytically with laws or legal situations, led to the conclusion that Greek law, despite the remarkable technical flexibility that characterized it in Hellenistic times, never attained the doctrinal refinement of Roman law. Ancient Greek law consists of the laws and legal institutions of ancient Greece. [15] Chroust, p. 343. A paragraph could be described as a “counterclaim” indicating that the case against the defendant was inappropriate and claiming that the plaintiff was wrong. The denial of the existence of a plea without a complaint of accompaniment against the applicant seems to have functioned in some way as a modern application for dismissal on the ground that a plea was not invoked. See Fed Rule 12(b)(6), which allows for the non-claim exception of a claim per motion, and Section 13 on counterclaims. For a useful list of terms used in ancient Greek law, see “A Glossary of Athenian Legal Terms.” www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_law_glossary.
Unlike the Greek philosophy of justice, the positive law of ancient Greece had little influence on later developments. Its concepts and methods, of course, largely determined the legislation and practice of the Hellenistic monarchies, and some institutions of Greek origin, such as the “Rhodian” law of the sea of dropping or certain methods of documentation (mainly Hellenistic, of course) were adopted by the Romans. Contrary to the opinions expressed a few decades ago, however, late Roman law and with it Western European jurisprudence did not experience a significant degree of Hellenization. It is only in the customs of the isolated places of Greece itself that some ancient traditions seem to survive; Their extent remains a problem for legal historians. The ancient Greek world did not have a uniform legal system; Instead, states formed their own political and legal systems, although these were likely largely based on the same general principles. Modern “rule of law” requires that the laws themselves be able to be consulted and cited in court. Scholars who adopt the agonistic view of the Athenian legal process tend to point out the difficulties a litigant would encounter in finding the law applicable to his case, and to point out the possibility of contradictions between different laws: How could Athenian litigants find out what the law was on a particular subject?3 In its in-depth and persuasive chapter, ” “The Laws of Athens: Publication, Preservation, Consultation,” James Sickinger speculates that the citation of the corresponding laws in court speeches was common (94).