Am 21.10.2011 03:08, schrieb Scout:



This does not require 'hidden means' or secrecy. It just requires more
than one person. 'Conspiracy' is among these extremely strange laws,
you have in America.

Then I take it you're not American, and that you think that a conspiracy
can only occur under American law.

No, I don't say so and I don't mean it.

Apparently you do since you seems to fill that one can only conspire
under the "extremely strange laws" in America.

Again you simply show that you're bat **** crazy.

'Conspiracy' is a legal term in anglo-saxon law. The German StGB
(Strafgesetzbuch ~ 'book about law of punishment') has no such rule,
because what is punished is what you do and not intentions.

A promise (much less an oath) given to do something illegal is void and
worthless according to BGB (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch ~ civil law book).

So an oath given to conspirators is worthless, hence cannot be
prosecuted. It is just hearsay or 'thought-crime'. Non of such things
are subject to prosecution in German law.

But this does not mean, that conspiracies are not possible in Germany.
The thing itself is of course a criminal offence. If a group of people
does illegal things, where any part of the doings is not illegal, only
the outcome is harmful, than they commit a collective crime.

These crimes occur and are subject to prosecution, only the terms are
different. We would speak of building (or supporting) of a criminal
group (Bildung einer kriminellen Vereinigung) or assisting in a crime
(Begünstigung) - or various other paragraphs. Even planning could be a
crime, but that is also an activity.

My impression about 'strange American laws' is, they are useless
leftovers and nobody ever cared to sort them out. Some of these laws are
so extremely strange, that nobody could possibly mean them seriously.
But its bad to keep such things, because the clearness about whats
allowed and what not, gets lost.

Same in civil laws in America. Civil law is the set of regulations,
that formulate the rights of citizens against other citizens (what we
call BGB). That are things like how a contract should look like or what
could be demanded or not. These regulations are very important, but do
not really exist in the US. You have a different (strange) system of
using former decisions of courts as 'quasi-law'. That is a very
impractical form of legislation and produces immense costs and generates
a lot of uncertainty.

An even more severe fault of the American legal system is, in my eyes,
that criminal and civil laws should be the same across the nation, hence
the US federal government should provide usable laws for all of the
country and not every single state.

TH