NCJ Number
101258
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1986) Pages: 83-93
Date Published
1986
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The American legal system is plagued by too many trials, too much adversarial behavior and indeed too much law.
Abstract
These themes, repeated over and over in popular journals and reinforced by the pronouncements of Chief Justice Warren Burger, Harvard University President Derek Bok, and a succession of Attorneys General and ABA presidents, have now attained the status of received wisdom. But the premises underlying these claims are controversial, uncertain, and in some respects demonstrably untrue. I want to comment briefly on these broad claims and then consider more specifically their application to the criminal justice system, where concern about adversarial behavior is most strikingly out of touch with reality. In criminal justice we already have a system dominated by cooperative, nonadversarial relationships, and in nearly all cases dispositions mutually satisfactory to the parties are achieved by negotiation or by a form of mediation under the informal auspices of a judge. What we need in criminal justice is not more cooperation but a return to formal, vigorously adversarial procedures. (Publisher abstract)