We in the common law world pride ourselves on our adversary system, where lawyers make the best arguments for opposing sides and judges decide which is the stronger argument. There is of course another world out there, the civil law world, where lawyers play a more modest role because the judges do much of the advocating, supposedly for the truth rather than for any particular party.
The problem with having a judge advocate for the truth is that most judges – indeed most people – have neither the rigorous mind nor the ample time to spend on one subject that Socrates had. Judges have busy jobs with many litigants pressing for their attention. When judges in a civil law system, having made their own investigation, come upon what appears to be the truth, they have no incentive to keep looking and plenty of incentive not to do so. The advocate for a party, on the other hand, does have plenty of incentive to keep looking.
