Hello, I’m Zhan Qingyun.

Before examining how lawyers analyze cases step by step, we are spending several episodes on the foundational ideas this series will use: law, lawyers, procedure, and judicial institutions.

Last time we discussed law’s relationship with society, why we obey it, and its coercive force.

Law reserves authority and violence to public power not only to end cycles of vengeance or let people resolve disputes peacefully.

It forbids private force and sends disputes to court, but even there people cannot do whatever they wish. Procedure constrains them. Those constraints bear on a legal system’s legitimacy: why may law punish, and where does that power come from?

Begin with an ordinary question. When major crimes such as murder, arson, rape, or robbery reach the news, reports say that police investigate and prosecutors bring charges.

In everyday civil disputes—eviction or an unpaid debt—no prosecutor sues for us. We must hire a lawyer and bring the case ourselves; if we do not, the matter ends.

Why, conversely, do victims and their families generally not prosecute murderers or robbers themselves?

Take a concrete example solely to illustrate procedure, without taking sides: Liu Qiangdong was accused in the United States of sexually assaulting a female student.

Because the initial allegation involved rape and possible crime, Minnesota prosecutors handled it as a criminal matter.

They later concluded the evidence was insufficient for charges, so the criminal proceeding ended.

The student then filed her own civil suit concerning the same event, but civil litigation was all she herself could initiate.

Her complaint could seek financial and reputational compensation, not a criminal conviction or imprisonment.

Law should decide the truth of that case. But suppose a person truly suffered a sexual or other criminal assault. If prosecutors decline charges for insufficient evidence and the victim disagrees, why can she not defend her rights by prosecuting the crime herself?

She may sue civilly, but if truly harmed she may believe compensation is insufficient and demand that the offender receive deserved criminal punishment. Why can she not pursue it herself?