Court of Justice
The Court of Justice is a separate entity from the Governors or Court of Houses that deals with judicial matters within Capitoleum.
Details
The Governors and the Court of Houses make the laws, but unlike most Kingdoms, everyone is equal to the law in Capitoleum and the justice system works separately from the governing system. Naturally, this is only true on paper as there is significant influence by the Governors into the matters of the Court of Justice, but this division still creates a lot of positive and "nationalistic" ideas among Capitoleum's citizens. The Court of Justice has also, on occasion, been used to judge in favour of non-gentry against gentry, which is unique to Capitoleum (albeit extremely rare).
The justice of Capitoleum feeds into the dream of Ascendancy, which most Houses realise and also play in to. It isn't unusual for some judicial matters that may have been solved behind closed doors within the gentry to be brought to the Court of Justice to pinpoint a scapegoat that then is punished according to law - much to the enjoyment and entertainment of non-gentry.
Organisation
The Court of Justice is lead by a Supreme Justice, which oversees cases that may affect the law itself, and is also the administrative leader of the Court. Under him are several tiers of Justices and other legal scholars who deal with cases much like a modern court in our world.
All other main legal titles are called "Justice" with some sort of definition and they normally drop the use of their given name in any official circumstances.
- Supreme Justice - (1) The judicial highest position available.
- Prime Justice - (6) Deals with most important cases and act as advisors to the Supreme Justice.
- Grand Justice - (8) Deals with important cases and, collectively, are in charge of the physical court (buildings, routines, papers, etc).
- Court Overseer - (many) Administrative staff of Grand Justices.
- Staff/Servants - All sorts of non-judicial staff such as cleaners, cooks, etc.
- Named man - (several) Role and not specific title; It's a "jury", but professional legal scholars paid to be the "jury", sometimes they themselves are Justices.
- Court Overseer - (many) Administrative staff of Grand Justices.
- Justice - Adjudicator in smaller disputes who can take the role of Indicter, Named man or Advocate ('prosecutor' or 'defense attourney') in more serious cases.
- Advocate - The name of the an Accuser's or Defender's role in a dispute.
Characters
- Supreme Justice Menthell - Current head of the Court of Justice.
- Justice Tall - Renard - Former Cescent Indicter who was critical of the Church and died from a horse kick to the head a few years ago.
- Justice Wyny - Melgwyn - Current Crescent Indicter.