What Are the Main Similarities and Differences Between the Conduct of Civil and Criminal Proceedings in The Australian Court System
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Law
Institution
Law
The sphere of the Australian legal system is divided into two main branches – civil and criminal law, which function within the context of the rule of law and aim to provide justice for all parties involved. Civil and criminal proceedings have some common elements; however, the procedures and goa...
What Are the Main Similarities and Differences Between the Conduct of Civil and Criminal
Proceedings in The Australian Court System?
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Introduction
The sphere of the Australian legal system is divided into two main branches – civil
and criminal law, which function within the context of the rule of law and aim to provide
justice for all parties involved. Civil and criminal proceedings have some common elements;
however, the procedures and goals of the two differ greatly. This essay aims at comparing
and contrasting these two phenomena and, thus, refer to relevant sources to support the
analysis.
Similarities
Civil and criminal cases in Australia are operated under an adversarial system
whereby two parties present their evidence to an unbiased judge or jury. This system allows
the prosecution and the defense side to present their case. Therefore, the primary intention is
to give a fair trial as much as possible (Meek, 2008). The system's contingency reveals the
parties' involvement in the search for facts and formulating questions. At the same time, the
decision-maker is independent – the judge or the jury decides based on the facts (Maylea,
2019). This forms the basis of the principle of procedural fairness that enables each party to
object to the evidence and/or arguments of the other.
In civil and criminal matters, the proof is always on the side of the person who
launches the case. In civil cases, the standard of proof which the plaintiff has to meet is the
standard of 'the balance of probabilities,' which means that to succeed, one has to prove that it
is more probable than not that what they are alleging is true (Robin et al., 2022). A criminal
prosecution must provide evidence of the defendant's guilt to the extent that there is no
reasonable doubt about that person's guilt because of the severe sanctions attached to criminal
convictions (Carvan, 2015). The rules of evidence that exist in sexual assault cases regarding
what is admissible in the court are also similar to those in the other cases to avoid bias. For
instance, the law disallows original statements made by people who are not present to stand
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