 The proceedings of Altairian trial defy which tenet of the modern western legal system?
He drew his carefully tailored Terran-styled jacket closer about his shoulders, shivering as his eyes avoided the black, yawning cell-holes they were passing. Interplanetary ruling. I've got three million credits sitting in the Terran Consulate on Altair V, just waiting for me to walk in and pick them up. You walk into a newly opened planet with your smart little bag of tricks, walk in here with a shaky passport and no permit, with no knowledge of the natives outside of two paragraphs of inaccuracies in the Explorer's Guide, and even then you're not content to come in and sell something legitimate, something the natives might conceivably be able to use. You're going to stand trial—and these natives are out to get you. "You've committed the most heinous crime these creatures can imagine, and they're going to get you for it if it's the last thing they do. But occasionally a situation arose where the civilization and social practices of the alien victims made it unwise to tamper with them. Altair I had been recognized at once by the Trading Commission as a commercial prize of tremendous value, but early reports had warned of the danger of wildcat trading on the little, musty, jungle-like planet with its shaggy, three-eyed inhabitants—warned specifically against the confidence tactics so frequently used—but there was always somebody, Meyerhoff reflected sourly, who just didn't get the word. You'd have found out that they're marsupials, and that two out of five of them get thrown out of their mother's pouch before they're old enough to survive. You'd have realized that they have to start fighting for individual rights almost as soon as they're born. And consequently, land is the key factor in their economy, not money; nothing but land. They've built up the most confusing and impossible system of barter and trade imaginable, aimed at individual survival, with land as the value behind the credit. Lying is the time-honored tradition, with their entire legal system built around it." "As we understand legal systems, I suppose they don't have one. They have only the haziest idea what truth represents, and they've shrugged off the idea as impossible and useless." Encroachment on private property is legal grounds for murder on this planet, and twelve of them descended on the same chunk of land at the same time, all armed with title-deeds." "You've got twelve mad Altairians in your hair.
 a defendant is innocent until proven guilty
 a defendant is innocent until proven guilty  a defendant has a right to due process  no warrant shall be issued without just cause  no one shall be subject to self-incrimination