Impact of magic on justice system?

[Aliquid]

If you have wizsards of high enough level to cast these kinds of spells, why aren't the other people similarly powerful? If a cleric who can cast Zone of Truth is rare, than this problem solves itself: such powerful clergymen have more important tasks than trying petty criminals.

In a city of 100,000 people, there would be a variety of big churches with Clerics living there and servicing the city. Lets say 2% of the population is a Cleric that is high enough level to cast "zone of truth", and 1/4 of those are from a lawful good or lawful neutral church. That leaves you with 500 Clerics that can cast this spell and 98,000 people who can't.

500 Clerics who live and work at a church that promotes law... I'm sure the church would be happy to have some of them dedicated to stopping petty crime while the others deal with other law related issues for the city.

Yes, other people are "similarly powerful", but the vast majority of the population isn't.

However, even assuming your interrogator is brilliant enough, their's still the killer of all interrogations: deafening silence. Those spells may force you to speak truth, but they do not compel you to speak in the first place.

Answer the questions or be thrown in jail. We are talking about commoners in a standard D&D setting which is typically quasi-medieval...

Assuming, of course, the cleric in question was telling the truth when they claimed to be a cleric of Law, as opposed to Trickery.

I specifically said big city. A big city would certainly have a church for a Lawful god. The trials/magistrate would operate out of the church. It would be rather hard to "pretend" to be a cleric of the church and get away with it. About as hard as me pretending to be a judge, and sitting in a court room.

And that the clerics rules would find lying about results to be not just an infraction, but a gross one (as otherwise, they could simply compensate with Lawful actions elsewhere in their lives and still be fine).

A well enough run organization would weed those people out easily enough.

And assuming you believe the clerics as an organization (instead of thinking they're self-deluded, since you can get similar powers from entirely non-theistic sources).

Doesn't matter what you think. It really doesn't matter. If the powers that are in charge of the city give the church the authority, then the church has that authority. [edit]Sorry, when I say it doesn't matter what "you" think, I'm referring to the "you" in game. i.e. "if you think the clerics are self-deluded". I don't intend to imply that it doesn't matter what you personally (the person typing) think.

It's a matter of values. Said system is, to the best of my knowledge, the one that most encapsulates my thoughts on human rights and justice.

Based on the tools available to us. Different tools are available in this scenario, so a different system would evolve. Even if you keep the same core values.

To use another model as a basis, I would need a lot of information. What do the people in this theoretical view value, what do they think of as justice, are people who are accused still people, what are considered people's basic rights, is accuracy or that somebody is found guilty more important.....you didn't give me any of that, so I went with what I know.

But you went with what you know about a typical "modern" world, rather than a typical "sword and sorcery fantasy" world.

Simply saying 'add magic' isn't nearly enough to get the sociology of the people down.

Even with the sociology of the western world, 'add magic' would result in something different than what we have today.