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Adversarial Justice : America’s Court System on Trial
Our adversarial legal system is used to evade the truth and makes winning the paramount goal. Here, a law veteran proposes we shift to an inquisitorial system seeking the truth, and recommends changes to evidentiary rules that confuse law enforcement and juries alike.
The Constitution and Criminal Procedure
Under the banners of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, the Supreme Court has constitutionalized a vast amount of criminal procedure law in ways that often reward the guilty while hurting the innocent. In this sweeping and provocative book, a distinguished constitutional scholar critiques these developments and reconceptualizes the basic foundations of the field. Akhil Amar examines the role of search warrants, the status of the exclusionary rule, self-incrimination theory and practice, and a host of Sixth Amendment trial-related rights. Through a close and original analysis of constitutional text, history, structure, and precedent--leavened with a healthy measure of common sense--he challenges conventional wisdom on a broad range of topics. He argues that the exclusion of reliable evidence in criminal trials is wrong in principle and in practice; unlawfully seized evidence and fruits of immunized testimony should be constitutionally admissible in criminal trials. Deterrence of government misconduct should in general occur through civil damage suits and administrative sanctions rather than through criminal exclusion. Although addressed to lawyers, judges, and law students, this bold book ultimately targets a much broader audience of policymakers and citizens who seek to understand the principles of this controversial area of constitutional law.
Crime, Gender, and Sexuality in Criminal Prosecutions
Knafla and his contributors explore the common problems and issues that emerge from the study of class and gender in criminal prosecutions, ranging from late medieval Europe to the early 20th century. The chapters demonstrate that conceptions of crime and criminal behavior are influenced decisively by the roles of class, gender, and later race as societies evolve in search of continuity and conformity. The seven chapters in this volume, together with a major book review essay and critical reviews of sixteen major works in the area, reinforce the series as a major forum for exploring new directions in criminal justice research as it relates to issues and problems of class, gender, and race in their historical, criminological, legal, and social aspects. The chapters explore common themes and issues that emerge from the study of class and gender through policing and criminal prosecutions in the local community to growing attempts of the new nation state to gain control of the prosecutorial system. Trevor Dean and Lee Beier examine prosecutorial energy in local communities of 15th and 16th century Europe, and see instruments of peace (agreement) and war (prosecution and conviction) as worthy institutions of social control. Andrea Knox studies the prosecution of Irish women, finding that they were prominent as perpetrators of crime as well as victims. Antony Simpson shows how sexual indiscretions developed the law of blackmail in the 18th century, influencing subtle changes in gender roles. David Englander's study of Henry Mayhew reinterprets the role of class in the criminal prosecutions of the 19th century, while Arvind Verma and Philippa Levine extend the roles of class and gender that had been developed in the criminal justice system into the imperial colonies of south-east and east Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. An important resource for scholars, students, and researchers involved with legal, political, social, and women's history, criminal justice studies, sociology and criminology, and criminal law.
Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States
This new 5-volume MacMillan set focuses on the substance of American law, the processes that produce its legal principles, and the history of the Supreme Court, from its creation to the present. One of the encyclopedia's distinguishing themes is the examination of case law, the essential texts that form the backbone of legal and pre-legal study in the United States. Overview essays address the history of such topics as citizenship, due process, Native Americans, racism, and contraception, emphasizing the social context of each and the social and political pressures that shaped interpretation. This approach plays directly into the cutting-edge field known as the law and social issues movement, which studies political and non-judicial history, and advocates a law outside the courts approach. Almost 1,100 peer-reviewed articles cover concepts, cases, topics, personalities, institutions, events, and processes. Written in accessible language and supplemented with a glossary, thematic outline, historical documents, illustrations, and indexes this title provides context and ease-of-use to law and pre-law students, professors, legal professionals and general users.
The Psychology and Law of Criminal Justice Processes
Psychological science now reveals much about the law's response to crime. This is the first text to bridge both fields as it presents psychological research and theory relevant to each phase of criminal justice processes. The materials are divided into three parts that follow a comprehensive introduction. The introduction analyses the major legal themes and values that guide criminal justice processes and points to the many psychological issues they raise. Part I examines how the legal system investigates and apprehends criminal suspects. Topics range from the identification, searching and seizing to the questioning of suspects. Part II focuses on how the legal system establishes guilt. To do so, it centres on the process of bargaining and pleading cases, assembling juries, providing expert witnesses, and considering defendants' mental states. Part III focuses on the disposition of cases. Namely, that part highlights the process of sentencing defendants, predicting criminal tendencies, treating and controlling offenders, and determining eligibility for such extreme punishments as the death penalty. The format seeks to give readers a feeling for the entire criminal justice process and for the role psychological science has and can play in it.
Trials Without Truth
Reginald Denny. O. J. Simpson. Colin Ferguson. Louise Woodward: all names that have cast a spotlight on the deficiencies of the American system of criminal justice. Yet, in the wake of each trial that exposes shocking behavior by trial participants or results in counterintuitive rulings--often with perverse results--the American public is reassured by the trial bar that the case is not "typical" and that our trial system remains the best in the world. William T. Pizzi here argues that what the public perceives is in fact exactly what the United States has: a trial system that places far too much emphasis on winning and not nearly enough on truth, one in which the abilities of a lawyer or the composition of a jury may be far more important to the outcome of a case than any evidence. How has a system on which Americans have lavished enormous amounts of energy, time, and money been allowed to degenerate into one so profoundly flawed? Acting as an informal tour guide, and bringing to bear his experiences as both insider and outsider, prosecutor and academic, Pizzi here exposes the structural faultlines of our trial system and its paralyzing obsession with procedure, specifically the ways in which lawyers are permitted to dominate trials, the system's preference for weak judges, and the absurdities of plea bargaining. By comparing and contrasting the U.S. system with that of a host of other countries, Trials Without Truth provides a clear-headed, wide-ranging critique of what ails the criminal justice system--and a prescription for how it can be fixed.