Oni --
With regard to my parallel civil (code)/common law development, from a background in customary law, position, I agree that what I am describing is just what common law is iRL. I personally favor common law as providing flexibility that is not provided by the civil law -- and I favor flexibility.
I do disagree that the conflation of criminal and civil (private) law has never been tried iRL. This is exactly what the Anglo-Norse weregeld system of thing justice was. It is prehistoric, perhaps, but not unprecedented -- even in the English justice system.
My concern is that we have a developed state, which presumably has the interest of all developed states in keeping its own peace. I take as a general rule that every crime (at least every crime that is not a "victimless" crime) is also a tort -- the only difference is who the plaintiff is and what harm the plaintiff suffered. I think we lose something by conflating crimes and torts -- we either lose the remedy for the victim or the remedy for the state. I think that there is good reason to preserve the distinction, even if we choose to load our system in favor of torts rather than crimes (in favor of private citizens rather than the state).
The other big problem I have is, English or not, the system as currently proposed through the JA and the Ashcroft Code is far too detailed. It makes decisions that I don't think we have enough information to make yet (at least not make rationally yet), and then forecloses the possibility of gathering that information by closing the issues. I agree that there will be something hard in actually finding out what works and what doesn't -- and what works best of the things that work -- but I think that this is work we should not shirk. Bright line rules might be easier in the short term -- but we lose the benefit of ensuring that the bright line rules we set are the right ones, the ones we truly want, if we just set them.
(Also, just as an aside, many African countries are civil law countries -- those colonized by civil law countries tend to be. That said, most African countries are becoming less like the countries that colonized them and more like what they were before the Imperial era, while keeping some concepts and structures from Imperial rule. This hybridization process -- which we also see in native governments in the Americas and Australia -- is very exciting. We are increasingly seeing combinations of Custom, common law, civil law, and Sharia, in various permutations, emerging and working as justice systems throughout the world. My point is that, if we look anywhere for guidance, we should look to places where there is a mixing and hybridization of multiple cultural forces into a single system -- because that is exactly what we are facing here on SL and in the CDS.)
Beathan