To bring a little more granularity though, precedential authority also exists in civil law systems, but probably not to the scale of common law.
So dissenting-but-not view. While bail is definitely a presumption, it also stands that there are a lot of gaps in PF about day-to-day life and the nuts and bolts of finance, government, etc. Using an existing legal system makes it much easier to frame discussion. Hell, I know when I was doing the hard-to-prove-embezzlement argument re: Heth, I was consulting with some lawyer friends about US corporate governance and the difficulties involved in establishing criminal charges.
/rant
That is exactly where my gripe lies. Everyone is assuming that it's an US based system. Why not Iranian then ? Why not Japanese ? Singapore ? Whatever ?
People pick up US because it's the thing they know best. Well, good for them, but at the same time you alienate every other culture in the process. I personally find it immersion breaking to see people assuming there are bails in some Gallente system. How would you react if someone started to associate it with an alien judicial system ? It's the same for me here.
Maybe there is bails in this case, maybe not...
It's an issue to which I may be overeacting to at times, but it is pretty similar to the use of non standard units (<- foreigners don't speak in their native language in RP for obvious reasons, that's the same here) and everything that often makes roleplay completely US centric and at times very hermetic to foreigners. I have noticed that a lot of people tend to think that because it's how it's done in the US world, then it must be similar in the rest of the world...
/rant