The Court is the arbiter of an institutionalzed government. Conceptually, a good court interprets the law and applies it to the real world. Philosophically, courts are intended to act as an impartial referee in establishing and then judging facts relating to events of possible breaches of law. Like in a good democracy, fighting here is meant to happen with words and arguments, therefore courts are generally weapons-free zones.

Courts play a large role in the modern philosophical approach to governmental administration. The triad goes as follows:

Legislative makes laws, this will be the politicians you vote (or not) into government. Democracy happens here.
Executive seeks and picks out entities in breach of the law (not to protect citizens!). A state-sanctioned authority to do this is commonly called a police.
Judicial interprets a law and actively applies it to whom the executive has picked out and charged. As state-sanctioned, this is commonly called a court.

This is the absolute basic foundation for any kind of self-governing entity but can be set up in many ways. Note how the executive and the judicial are beholden to the legislative because it's the legislative's law the executive and judicial are basing their procedures on. If the law changes, so will police action and court rulings, which means it is important to vote.
The idea behind a court is an authority to take on cases of potential breaches of law, assess their truthfulness and factuality as best as possible and, if the defendant is found to be guilty, to apply couteractive measure with the goal of deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution and protection of the public¹⁾. Depending on who you ask, denunciation makes another category, but it can be considered as inherent to retribution.

Philosophy

A court works on the premise that it is the institution of a government to establish facts of a potential crime. For that it weighs evidence, witness hearings, the defendant and all other procurable thing that are helpful to establish the facts. The goal is to get as close as possible to an estimate of the truth, assuming there is such a thing as a shared reality between humans. For this, the qualifier reasonable doubt is used. In a world where we are seperated from reality by virtue of our limited senses, there is no so thing such as a brute fact (except of course for my own existence, which is proven by my existence). In practical terms for the real world, it is not possible to find “absolute evidence” for a crime. There is always the possibility that every single DNA scanner misattributes the criminal's DNA, there's always the possibility that every surveillance camera recording your murder was somehow glitching, or other conspiratorial ideas that can pull evidence into question. However, these are not reasonable doubts which is where the term reasonable doubt comes from. Reasonable doubt is the legal standad of proof and an intentionally high burden of proof to overcome. The idea is that all persons are presumed to be innocent (commonly known as “Innocent until proven guilty”) and it is up to the prosecution to establish undeniable proof of the guilt of the defendant. Well, reasonably undeniable, of course, since everything can be denied technically.²⁾ Of course, the problem with this is still that no evidence is absolute evidence and therefore any court may end up wrongly sentencing a person who was innocent. Reasonable doubt and Presumed Innocence are maxims intended to make sure that such things never happen. Any court, where uncertain about the innocence of a defendant, will always prefer to let them go rather than run the risk of sentencing someone who could as well be innocent. Courts acknowledge that, from an philosophical perspective, there's nothing worse a court can do than punishing the innocent.³⁾

So, zoom out a bit, the government works on the premise that a court is there to establish facts - as best as it can, anyway. Therefore, anyone suspected to be in violation of the law will be brought to a court where they will have a trial. The idea is that “the truth will always come out”, and if you are innocent you will be able to walk away from the court. This is why a police officer can arrest you even if you have done nothing wrong. Sure, a police officer's power to arrest a person is limited, but since the truth is meant to be determined in court, you do not get to resist an arrest. To decide whether an arrest was warranted or not is upon a judge to evaluate in a trial, not on you in that situation. To be placed under arrest is almost always lawful⁴⁾ and by resisting or avoiding that arrest - even if you have done nothing to warrant it - constitutes a crime in of itself. Again, if you are innocent, let yourself be arrested to see the court, have your innocence proven, then file lawsuits against the PD for an unlawful arrest. That's the philosophy, anyway. That it's impractical to actually do it like this - because lawsuits tend to be too expensive for the normal person - is obvious, but philosophically this is a reasonable approach to policing.

Types of Court

The mode in which a court attempts to approximate the truth can vary, but classically there are two distinct types. Adversarial and Inquisitive. Adversarial courts are classical courts as most people will know them, where prosecution and defense work competitive against each other to convince the jury/judge. In an inquisitive court, the jury and judge establish facts themselves through their own investigation. This can be more efficient and/or effective as adversarial courts, but also gives an unprecedented amount of power to the jury, increasing the risk of corruption.

Problems

Of course, this is all just philosophy. It's how the system is meant to work. In the real world, however, things will never work just as designed and problems emerge. Classical corruption, systemic disadvantages to marginalized groups, individual biases, capitalist influences on the court system as a whole, etc. etc. all work against the judicial system and causes many, many problems. Also, courts are beholden to the laws they interpret, so if laws are unfair or unethical, their verdicts will end up reflecting these imbalances.

¹⁾

Kod Lyons - Pillars of Sentencing

²⁾

The individual facts of a crime are called “Elements” and must all be successively proven for a sentence. The chain of proof must be unbroken and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

³⁾

Blackstone ratio: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

⁴⁾

Except in exceptions, imagine some weird life or death scenario.

Ramblings

Table of Contents

Philosophy

Types of Court

Problems