How justice works

Every political bloc in Cross operates a legal model of its own, reflecting the local structure of power. Three radically different systems coexist on the continent.

---

I. The Clerical Order — Canon Law (100% Church)

Founding principle

Every crime is, in the last instance, an offence against God. Therefore judgement is a prerogative of the Church. The civil State = the executing arm of the Church, with no jurisdiction of its own.

Structure

• Parish Tribunal (the lowest): the local canon judges light crimes (a brawl, petty theft, minor blasphemy). Sentence: penance, a fine, a brief parish imprisonment.
• Mitred Tribunal (intermediate): the Bishop judges middling crimes (murder, grave theft, defamation, aristocratic adultery). Sentence: prison, exile, ritual flogging, banishment to Limes Orientalis (forced conscription to the front).
• Cardinalatial Tribunal (the higher): the Cardinal-State judges grave crimes (heresy, treason against the Order, conspiracy). Sentence: perpetual imprisonment, liturgical execution.
• Inquisitorial Tribunal (special): the Cardinal-Inquisitor judges pactuary men and organised heresy. Summary, with no advocate, with no public. Sentence: execution within 24-72 hours.
• Pontifical Tribunal (supreme): the Pontiff judges cardinals and Lords of Salvation. The only level at which a cardinal may be judged.

Procedure

• Denunciation: it may come from anyone (an informer, a parish, the Inquisition).
• Inquiry: a clerical investigation. It may last days or years.
• Hearing: the accused appears with no formal defence advocate. He may have a spiritual assistant (a Liturgical who advocates in conscience).
• Sentence: given by a single judge (a Canon, a Mitred Prelate, a Cardinal, or an inquisitorial college of 3).
• Appeal: only in grave cases, and only to a higher level. There is no separate "court of appeal".

Characteristic penalties

• Spiritual penance: fasting, obligatory prayer, pilgrimage to Aurum Roma.
• Ritual flogging: in a public square. The canon counts the strokes. 7, 21, 49 strokes according to gravity.
• Military banishment: forced recruitment to Limes Orientalis or the Mar Tenebrum front. Average survival: 2-3 years.
• Excommunication: the cutting off of the sacraments. Practically a sentence of social death (an excommunicate may not marry, be buried in consecrated ground, or travel with clerical protection).
• Liturgical execution: the gallows in a public square (common crimes), burning at the stake (ostentatious heresy), hanging + decapitation (grave treason).

Aurum Romana as the reference

• The Order applies the same laws in all 7 internal States, but with minor regional variations.
• The codified law: the Codex Coronatus (five volumes, most recent edition: 1875). Available in all the larger parishes.

---

II. Republics — Private Law with Arbitration

Velinia the Most Serene

Principle

A crime is, primarily, the violation of a social contract between private parties. The State intervenes only when the parties cannot resolve it.

Structure

• Chamber of Arbitration: civil dispute or crime against property. Elected arbiters (3 chosen by the parties, or 3 appointed by the Chamber if the parties disagree). The arbiters are paid by the parties. A final decision, with no ordinary appeal.
• Common Tribunal: murder, grave bodily harm, major commercial falsification. Judges appointed by the Doge.
• The Ten Blacks: a secret tribunal. It judges conspiracy against the Most Serene (espionage, political treason, a pactuary pact). No advocate, no public, sentence within 24-48 hours. The functional equivalent of the Order's Inquisition, but entirely civil (with no clergy).
• Council of Captains: it judges the violation of patrician honour (among the 99 Houses). A tribunal of mercantile peace.

Procedure

• A strong role for mercantile law. Every transaction has a written contract; every contract has an arbitration clause.
• Private advocates exist and are expensive. Whoever cannot pay almost always loses.
• Appeals exist in great commercial cases (the Doge's Appellate Chamber).

Penalties

• A fine in gold: the standard. Velinia is mercantile; a monetary payment resolves most matters.
• Confiscation of goods: for grave fraud.
• Exile to an overseas mercantile colony (there are no colonies properly speaking, but there are outposts on islands and at maritime stations where exile means forced labour).
• The galleys: a prisoner forced to row in merchant or military ships. Survival ~5 years.
• Execution: garrotting in a closed chamber (the Ten Blacks) or hanging in a public square (the Common Tribunal).
• Submersion in the Canal: the traditional penalty for traitors. Feet bound, thrown into the central canal.

The Kantonal Confederation

Principle

Each canton governs its own justice. A minimal common law covers inter-cantonal disputes.