Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the non-adversarial nature of Thai Court proceedings. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya City Expat's Club: Staying Safe Legally in Thailand in 2023. It is a really good article here, a lot of information in there. I am going to quote a small except but I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail, a lot of info in there. Quoting directly: "There are no jury trials in Thailand eliminating the adversarial aspects during Court proceedings." All of these statements are true within that specific sentence. However, I think there is a little bit of a conflation there. Jury trials per se, do not necessarily mean there is an adversarial component. I could see a scenario where one can construct Court proceedings where you have juries but use what in Thailand is called an inquisitorial system as opposed to an adversarial system. Now that would look really weird and I don't know of any jurisdiction on earth that has anything like that to the best of my knowledge, I don't think there is one although I am probably wrong. There may be some jurisdiction out there like something in the Channel Islands or something, that yeah you know "yeah, we have juries but we use an inquisitorial system", similar for example to the French or something. I am not saying that exists by the way I'm just saying I can see a scenario out there somewhere where maybe there is juries without adversarial proceedings. 

When we talk about adversarial proceedings, you need to understand that in the Common Law tradition, and I think this kind of goes back to the notion of legal trials versus like trial by combat, honestly, it does go back into that. I think there was a recent movie with Matt Damon and I think Ben Affleck was in it where it was I think it was the Last Duel, or something like this where a woman's honour was sort of impugned and the husband challenged this other person to a duel and they had a full on duel and one of the guys killed the other guy and her honour was restored and off they went, that trial was considered concluded, that was a trial by combat. Now obviously the Common Law tradition has moved away from trials by combat but the adversarial nature of those proceedings still exists and the thinking, legally speaking, the thinking is by creating an adversarial forum, the truth is going to come out that much more clearly as a result of the back and forth between the two parties. I can see the thinking on that and for years I was very much sort of in that box; I had those blinders on with respect to how I viewed the law. But over the years of living in Thailand and working with Thai Attorneys and to be clear, I am an American Attorney, I am not a Thai Attorney, I have Thai nationality, I am the Managing Director of the firm and again as I have mentioned in other videos, when I make these videos pertaining to Thai Law, we have Thai Attorneys here in the firm review them to make sure I am not totally talking off script but these are for educational purposes only. I like to make these videos to make observations from a Western legal perspective or more specifically maybe a Common Law legal perspective and then sort of apply it to or use that prism to look at the Thai Legal System to provide some further insight to foreign nationals as to how it really works over here, and this is one of those things. This non-adversarial nature of the Thai legal system, it's very different. It really colours everything because it's fundamental to the whole process that they are not looking to necessarily cast blame or to have a fight about who is right for lack of a better term in the courtroom. Instead what a judge or a panel of judges will do in either a Civil or Criminal setting here in Thailand, is try to determine what in fact happened, so determine the facts and then apply the law. That is what they are doing as opposed to who is right, who is wrong; make objections, did you make a timely objection? If not, the objection can't be brought forth in an appeal etc., etc. These kind of adversarial functions that occur in a Common Law context, that is not what the goal is in the Thai Legal context and it's a really, it may seem like a fine point but it's not. This gets to the fundamental nature of how these legal proceedings operate. 

So for those out there who are coming to Thailand and hopefully you never find yourself interacting with the legal system or the judicial system here in Thailand, but if you do and I have come in contact with it mostly as an observer here in Thailand, it is different if you are used to a Western legal tradition. And understand it colours many things most notably oftentimes there is a fact, sort of an inquest oftentimes in criminal proceedings wherein all the inquisitor is doing is trying to determine what happened as opposed to accusing someone which once you are accused, okay now certain rights may kick in, like right to an Attorney or something of this nature but in the inquest for lack of a better term phase, that's not what is happening. They are just trying to determine what is going on and so the presumption of being able to have an Attorney for example may not just immediately arise, that's just one example of how this differentiation between inquisitorial and adversarial can have practical implications when dealing with the system.

Again this is not an exhaustive video on how this works. I am just trying to kind of maybe provide some insight and maybe help people make a paradigm shift if you will in understanding that the Thai Legal System very much does not operate in the same way that perhaps we would say Western or more acutely the Common Law legal tradition we are used to dealing with that type of operation in those jurisdictions.