Fair trials and procedural tradition in Europe

Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 365-387

  Field, Stewart ^a  

^a CARDIFF UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 67049097967     PISSN: 01436503     EISSN: 14643820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ojls/gqp004     Document Type: Review

References (135)

1. See references listed in P Roberts, 'Comparative Criminal Justice Goes Global' (2008) 28 OJLS 369-91, 369, n 1.
2. SJ Summers, Fair Trials: The European Criminal Procedural Tradition and the European Court of Human Rights (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2007), henceforth Fair Trials.
3. Fair Trials 9.
4. Ibid xix.
5. Ibid 22.
6. Ibid 27. With the opposing sides having an equal procedural opportunity to present argument.
7. Ibid 29.
8. Ibid xix.
9. Ibid 99.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid 167.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid 164, 167.
14. Ibid 5.
15. Ibid 6.
16. Ibid 5, citing the example of Scotland.
17. Ibid 7, citing the influence of the parties in German criminal procedure.
18. Ibid 9-10.
19. Ibid 10.
20. J Jackson, 'The Effect of Human Rights on Criminal Evidentiary Processes: Towards Convergence, Divergence or Realignment?' (2005) 68 MLR 737-64, 740.
21. See to the same effect, J Spencer, 'Introduction' in J Spencer and M Delmas-Marty (eds), European Criminal Procedures (CUP, Cambridge 2002) 20.
22. She refers to the 'use of broad, meaningless categories', Fair Trials 13.
23. Jackson (n 20) 742.
24. The exclusion of broad categories of evidence considered unreliable or as having been unfairly or illegally obtained is sometimes (but not always) regarded as distinctively adversarial. So too is the 'two-stage' trial where evidence of character is generally inadmissible while guilt or innocence is considered but fully considered in the separate sentencing phase: See S Field, 'State, citizen and character in French criminal process' (2006) 33J Law and Society 522-46.
25. Jackson (n 20) 744.
26. This is very similar to the broader 'taxonomic project' in comparative legal studies based on legal families that Patrick Glenn has recently described and criticized: H Patrick Glenn, 'Comparative Legal Families and Comparative Legal Traditions' in M Reimann and R Zimmerman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (OUP, Oxford 2008).
27. Glenn (n 25) 425.
28. Ibid 432.
29. Ibid 425. Also Patrick Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World (OUP, Oxford 2004), chapter 1.
30. This recalls Merryman's evocative characterization of legal tradition as 'a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes' about the nature of law and how it should be organized and put into operation: A Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition (Stanford University Press, Stanford 1985) 2.
31. Ibid 432.
32. Fair Trials, chapters 2 and 3.
33. See also R Vogler, A World View of Criminal Justice (Ashgate, Aldershot 2005), chapter three.
34. Vogler (n 30) 46.
35. M Delmas-Marty (Chair), La Mise en Etat des Affaires Pénales (Documentation Française, Paris 1991) 29-35
36. C Brants and S Field, 'Les méthodes d'enquéte proactives et le contrôle des risques' (1997) 21 Déviance et Société 401-14, 406.
37. As Summers suggests: Fair Trials 5.
38. For an attempt to trace the influence of procedural tradition and legal and political cultures on reactions to 'new' policing methods, see C Brants and S Field, 'Legal cultures, political cultures and procedural traditions: Towards a comparative interpretation of covert and proactive policing in England and Wales and the Netherlands' in D Nelken (ed) Contrasting Criminal Justice (Ashgate, Aldershot 2000).
39. For an outline of the way an acceptance of negotiated outcomes by jurisdictions from within the inquisitorial tradition has been shaped by that tradition, see M Langer, 'From Legal Transplants to Legal Translations: The Globalisation of Plea Bargaining and the Americanization Thesis in Criminal Process' (2004) 45 Harvard Int LJ 1-64.
40. R Williams, Marxism and Literature (OUP, Oxford 1977) 114.
41. E Hobsbawm and T Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (CUP, Cambridge 1998).
42. Williams (n 35) 115.
43. Vogler (n 30) 19.
44. See Roberts (n 1) for a forceful rejection of that interpretation.
45. For a range of perspectives see D Nelken (ed) Comparing Legal Cultures (Dartmouth, Aldershot 1997).
46. Fair Trials 10.
47. In this context, diversion is intended to suggest positive responses to criminal offences which do not involve criminal convictions and sentences. Such state organized responses will seek to resolve the social conflicts thought to underpin much offending by, for example, such mechanisms as reparation and mediation. For a discussion of the cultural complexities of the term diversion see Brants and Field (n 34) 79.
48. Brants and Field (n 34) 92.
49. A Crawford, 'Contrasts in victim-offender mediation' in Nelken (n 34) 205.
50. M Delmas-Marty, 'Towards a European Model of the Criminal Trial' in M Delmas-Marty (ed), The Criminal Process and Human Rights: Towards a European Consciousness (Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht 1995).
51. Fair Trials 3.
52. For the general argument see 8-9.
53. Quite why this should be so is not explicitly explained: The implication may be that positing a clear separation between inquisitorial and adversarial means that one needs to find an explanation for the evidence of mutual influence. Accounts based on convergence or harmonization may provide this.
54. Fair Trials 11.
55. Ibid 12.
56. Ibid 11.
57. Roberts (n 1) 373-7.
58. Ibid 375.
59. See C Brants and S Field, Participation Rights and Proactive Policing (Kluwer, Deventer 1995), chapter 2 for an attempt at normative thinking as a tool for evaluation of described movements in Europe.
60. Fair Trials 11-3.
61. Are Mireille Delmas-Marty, John Langbein, John Spencer and John Jackson so afflicted?
62. Vogler (n 30) 154, refers to a number of instances where authors from jurisdictions within the adversarial tradition have advocated adoption of some aspects of the inquisitorial tradition.
63. Vogler (n 30) 52, 170, J Hodgson, French Criminal Justice (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2005) 59-61.
64. R Tombs and I Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (Heinemann, London 2006).
65. Fair Trials 22.
66. Ibid 24.
67. For an indication of the influence of Summers' German and Austrian jurists on developments in the late nineteenth century (and in particular the extent of Glaser's influence on the Austrian Code of 1873) see A Esmein, History of Continental Criminal Procedure (Little Brown & Co, Boston 1913, reprinted Kelley, New York 1968) 616, 582-3.
68. Spencer also emphasizes the influence of von Feuerbach and Mittermaier on the 1877 German Code of Criminal Procedure: JR Spencer, Hearsay in Criminal Proceedings (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2008) 22.
69. Fair Trials 31.
70. Ibid 31-4.
71. Ibid 29.
72. Ibid 25-6.
73. Ibid 58.
74. Ibid 36-7.
75. D Salas 'Role of the Judge' in Delmas-Marty and Spencer (n 20) 509.
76. Fair Trials 37.
77. There the objection led to separation of prosecutorial and pre-trial investigative functions which had traditionally been combined and performed by the same pre-trial magistrates. Ibid 31-4.
78. See Vogler (n 30) 140-4.
79. Fair Trials 47-51.
80. Ibid 51.
81. Ibid 53.
82. Ibid.
83. Spencer 'Evidence' in Delmas-Marty and Spencer (n 20) 618.
84. Fair Trials 27.
85. Ibid 83, 27.
86. Ibid 82.
87. Ibid 27.
88. Ibid 83.
89. Ibid 89.
90. Ibid 28-9.
91. Ibid 90-2.
92. Ibid 84.
93. Ibid 87, citing Cox v Coleridge (1822) and an English statute of 1848 on the taking of statements by a magistrate from the accused.
94. J Langbein, Origins of Adversary Trial (OUP, Oxford 2003) 40-7, 273-7.
95. J Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 (Clarendon, Oxford 1986) 274.
96. J Spencer, La procédure pénale anglaise (PUF, Paris 1998) 14 citing L Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, Vol. 3 (Stevens, London 1956) and D Hay and F Snyder, Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750-1850 (OUP, Oxford 1989).
97. Fair Trials 81.
98. Spencer, 1998 (n 87) 15.
99. Fair Trials 89.
100. Langbein (n 85) 242.
101. J Spencer, 'Proactive policing and the principles of immediacy and orality' in S Field and C Pelser (eds), Invading the Private: State Accountability and New Investigative Methods in Europe (Ashgate, Aldershot 1998), J Spencer, Hearsay Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2008) 22.
102. Fair Trials 98.
103. Ibid 70.
104. Ibid 99.
105. Ibid 111.
106. Ibid 106.
107. This kind of equality of investigative resources is what Lord Devlin felt to be the (false) theoretical assumption upon which the English 'adversarial' tradition was based: Lord Devlin, The Judge (OUP, Oxford 1979) 71.
108. Fair Trials, 103-10.
109. Ibid 100-2.
110. We will see in a moment that Summers thinks this should be regarded as a breach of the 'accusatorial trinity' and, as such, unacceptable.
111. Fair Trials 124-5.
112. Ibid 127.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid 128, 130.
115. Ibid 131.
116. Ibid 131.
117. Ibid 137-46.
118. Ibid 148.
119. Ibid 141, 148.
120. Ibid 123, 164, 167.
121. See above, section 3 (B).
122. Roberts (n 1) 375.
123. Fair Trials 180.
124. Ibid 135.
125. Spencer (n 92) 20-4.
126. Fair Trials 167.
127. Ibid 146.
128. See Spencer (n 92) 9-20 and references. I Dennis, Law of Evidence (Sweet and Maxwell, London 2007) 667-77,
129. P Roberts and A Zuckerman, Criminal Evidence (OUP, Oxford 2004) 596-606.
130. Langer (n 34).
131. See the Criminal Procedure Rules 2005 in England and Wales, S Field and P Thomas, 'Introduction' in S Field and P Thomas (eds), Justice and Efficiency? (1994) 21 J Law and Society 1-19.
132. Fair Trials 132.
133. See S Field and A West, 'Dialogue and the Inquisitorial Tradition: French Defence Lawyers in the Pre-Trial Criminal Process' (2003) 14 Crim L Forum 261-316 on cultural constraints on exploiting defence pre-trial participation rights.
134. For example, Summers is consistently sceptical about the influence of liberal individualism and arguments from individual rights and autonomy in the rise of defence rights in the nineteenth century: Fair Trials 61-3, 72, 172-4.
135. V Gessner and D Nelken, European Ways of Law (Hart Publishing, Oxford 2007).