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raymaehn t1_j6o3hm9 wrote

Reply to comment by bexmex in Medieval Mixed-Gender Fight Club: Behold Images from a 15th-Century Fighting Manual by ArtOak

> it’s not from trial by combat, there were no records of that being used after 1200.

It's not from trial by combat to settle a dispute between husband and wife.

Trial by combat in general was still around, but it was only invoked in cases of (for example) murder, treason, blasphemy and a few other high-profile accusations.

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Thusgirl t1_j6o8iwj wrote

Really let's murderers off the hook if they're good at murdering.

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raymaehn t1_j6oahlr wrote

This is a legal system that assumes God exists and is interested in humanity. Werner says that Albrecht killed somebody. Albrecht says that's a lie. Both have three respected members of the community backing them up. Evidence - based rulings and In Dubio Pro Reo aren't really things yet.

So what's the logical consequence? Appeal to the ultimate authority. Give Albrecht and Werner weapons, put them in the arena and let God sort them out. He'll make sure the guy who's in the right wins. It might seem barbaric from a modern perspective but from a medieval mindset it's elegant.

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Thusgirl t1_j6od31e wrote

So...

Really let's murderers off the hook if they're good at murdering.

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raymaehn t1_j6oday6 wrote

Pretty much, yeah. But only if those murderers have just as many friends as their accusers.

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Alarming-Ad1100 t1_j6oki9k wrote

Just wanna say you broke it down really well thanks for expanding my understanding of this a little more. Their perspective in mind it’s understandable and human strangely.

Thankfully things have changed but it’s so wild

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[deleted] t1_j6omu6w wrote

[removed]

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raymaehn t1_j6oqhxr wrote

Thanks, that's good to hear!

When I'm talking about trials by combat I'm talking about roughly 1400 onward so I can't say much about what happens before that but to my knowledge it wasn't over after the fight was over. In my example, if Albrecht won and Werner survived the fight then Werner was on the hook now. Because if Albrecht won then Werner really did lie. To a judge, under oath. That was a serious crime in and of itself.

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nsa_reddit_monitor t1_j6oh8iz wrote

Technically trial by combat is still an option in the US court system. This is because it was legal in Britain when the US declared independence, and the British laws/precedents were mostly kept as-is. Britain outlawed it a few decades later but that didn't change the now seperated laws in the US.

Nobody's ever specifically outlawed trial by combat in the US because only a few people have ever tried to use it, and those people were told to shut up and just pay their traffic tickets.

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Powerful_Phrase_9168 t1_j6on4f8 wrote

Is it actually codified anywhere or just implied that it's a legal option?

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jmcs t1_j6optb3 wrote

I just found a recent legal article about it: https://lawpublications.barry.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1187&context=barrylrev

Still didn't read it but I'll post a TLDR when I finish skimming through it.

TLDR: it's not codified and the claim that the US inherited the full body of English Common Law at the time of the secession (including trial by combat) is generally not accepted. There's no explicit decision of the supreme court but it's very unlikely it's actually legal in the US.

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