Uses for Magic in the civilized judicial system
By Iachm el Mottsv, Senior Scribe
Abstract
I will list advantages and disadvantages with the use of magic in the modern courtroom. The conclusion is that any reasonable ruler will disallow all magic from the judging part of the judicial system. We will mostly talk about three types of spells ? ?Detect Evil?, ?Detect lie? and ?Geas?. Users of magic, be it divine or natural, will have many different names for these spells, as is their wont, but an intelligent person will be able to make logical arguments about the concepts without launching into a week-long tirade of the naming of spells.
Definitions
Detect Evil ? A class of spells that will tell the caster if a target is ?evil?. Exactly what ?evil? is will be subject to discussion later in this dissertation.
Detect Lie ? A class of spells that will allow the caster to tell if a subject is lying.
Geas ? Spells that force the target to obey the caster for a longer or shorter time. This may include, but not limited to, ?speak the truth?, ?Stay silent?, ?come along peacefully? as well as ?Lie to the judge.?
Detect Evil
Lets start with Detect Evil. What is evil? If the caster is ?channeling the powers of the gods? (to the extent gods exists, and/or are paying attention to all priests in the world. More on that in my paper ?The divine improbability?) then Evil is a person whose beliefs and/or actions are strongly contrary to the teachings of my god.
Any individual with a capacity for reasoning immediately sees the problem with this. A priest of Kieron will detect an outspoken proponent of abstinence as evil, a priest of Kuor may detect a good lawyer as Evil (Since they hinder the Law by defending the guilty). Bards singing songs and telling stories that can scare people may detect as Evil by a priest of Reann.
It becomes even more absurd when we regard the case of ?The brothers of Light? vs ?The path of light?. Both sects worshipped an aspect of Phaon, the major difference in beliefs was in regards what days were holy days, and what the ?true name? of the god was. The sects fought for over 20 years, ending only when the last brother of light was slain. Both groups were convinced they were right. In examining surviving documentation, I was able to conclude that the high priests of both sects had asked their god for guidance, and both had gotten the holy quest to purge the offenders from the face of the planet.
What about users of natural magic then? In those cases the definition of Evil is based on the casters own morale, and dare I say ? agenda. If the gods seem like a troublesome source for the definition of Evil, mere Mortals are a nightmare.
Detect Evil spells will also suffer from the problems with human nature that Detect Lie does (see below), but that should not even be needed to come to the conclusion that the Detect Evil spells have no place in a civilized society. As an aside, I must mention that most countries of Jaiman with a strong Church have laws allowing Paladins to kill anyone on sight that registers as Evil by them. Men of learning should never travel without a bodyguard in those countries.
Detect Lie
Detect Lie spells sounds at the outset like a good idea. The problems stem from the fact that the results of the spells are only known to the caster himself. A caster that very well may have an agenda of his own.
Do we trust a normal mortal to be the final judge over someone life? That is exactly what a Judge does, you may argue. Yes, but the Judge does so in the open, where everyone can see. In the case of a spell caster he will just wave his hands around and mumble a bit, and then declare that he ?Has cast the spell. The accused is lying and should be executed?. How do we even know that he cast a spell? Or what the results of the spell was? Or if the spell worked.
Spell casters are famous for, what they themselves call, ?spell fumbles?. Unexpected, and sometimes undetectable, flaws in their spells. Even for expert users this has been known to happen as often as one time in twenty, for less experienced casters the rate is even higher. Do we really trust people lives to a toss of the die?
In my previous homelands on Tanra Truth and Justice was defined by the priests. Offend a priest in any way and you would be strangled (the harshest sentence for one of the Y?Kin, burning being the most sacred) to death. Offences could include things like not praying enough, not paying enough taxes to the priest, having a beautiful wife that cought the eye of the priest. All in the name of Great Yugal. All judging was done by priests, acting on behalf of their god. I invite any proponent of judicial magic to go visit. It may be that ?being a foreigner? is an offence to Yugal as well, but it?s divine magic, so it can not be wrong, can it?
Are we confident that the caster has not been paid off by some of the parties? How do we know if the caster is telling the truth? Do we have a second caster that verifies that the first is telling the truth? Who verifies him? What if both are bought?
No, it?s clear for the initiated reader that a system open for public scrutiny is the only way to go.
Geas
As I have argued above, trust in casters and the accuracy of their spells is a problem. All the things that I have said about Detect Lie is also true for Geas ? even more so in fact. With a Geas spell, the poor target may even be telling lies to the Judge, acting like a puppet dangling from the casters strings. The horrifying aspect of this is that for the public it may actually look like an open and fair trial, while in fact it?s anything but.
I propose that not only Geas type spells be outlawed completely, but also that in capital trials a series of experts be called in to verify that no Geas has been cast on the accused or any witness. The irony of having a group of experts that are subject to the same limitations as casters of Detect Lie is not lost on me. It?s still better than not doing it.
Conclusion
This dissertation has shown why magic can not be trusted in any civilized court. Magic has its uses, but when it comes to exertions of Law they should be limited to apprehension of criminals and possibly execution.
Disclaimer ? This is written in character and should not in any way be seen to reflect mine or any other real person?s opinions about law, religion, magic or theocracies.
Iachm el Mottsv is a PC of mine. He is very bright, very arrogant and more than a little bitter about lacking even an ounce of talent for magic.
