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Unlike the legal systems in Australia, USA and the United Kingdom, where an adversarial structure exists, much of the rest of Europe relies on an inquisitorial system .
As most iTWire readers are familiar, the Adversarial System places two parties in opposition, with a decision to be made upon the evidence presented by some presiding authority. In most situations, these two parties represent the government (generally referred to as "The Crown" in Australia) and an accused person.
In contrast, the court is actively involved in investigating the facts of a case under the Inquisitorial System. This is why we regularly hear of Judges in Italy or France being actively involved in investigations.
It is with this distinction in mind that we may now return to the judgement handed down earlier this evening.
Having lost his initial appeal and subsequently been given leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, WikiLeaks' Assange's appeal hinged upon a single point: whether or not the Swedish prosecutor who issued the European Arrest Warrant was a "judicial authority" as required by English law. Assange's team argued that this person should be some kind of Judge (or equivalent) and sought to have the extradition order overturned on that basis.
The decision is summarised on the next page.
