Adversarial system of justice
The adversarial system (or adversary system) of law is the system of law, generally adopted in common law countries, that relies on the skill of each advocate representing his or her party's positions and involves a neutral person, usually the judge, trying to determine the truth of the case. The inquisitorial system usually found on the continent of Europe among civil law systems (i.e., those deriving from Roman law or the Napoleonic Code) has a judge (or a group of judges who work together) whose task is to investigate the case. The adversarial system is the two-sided structure under which American criminal trial courts operate that pits the prosecution against the defence. Justice is done when the most effective adversary is able to convince the judge or jury that his or her perspective on the case is the correct one.
Some writers trace the process to the medieval mode of trial by combat, in which some litigants, notably women, were allowed a champion to represent them. Certainly the use of the jury in the common law system seems to have fostered the adversarial system, and there are many today who believe that it remains the best way of providing for the determination of a disputed issue. On the other hand, the new British Civil Justice reforms initiated by Lord Woolf (the Civil Procedure Rules or CPR) are prefaced with a case management system controlled by the judge rather than by the lawyers representing the different parties; similar case management systems are coming into use in the United States. Lawyers are often asked how they can represent someone if they believe that person to be guilty; counsel must not deceive the court but his client is entitled to have the best presentation of the case laid before the tribunal and to have the evidence fully tested. In England and Wales, if a client states his guilt to his counsel, the counsel is required to cease working on the case (assuming the client is pleading innocence).
As an accused is not compelled to give evidence in a criminal adversarial proceeding, he may not be questioned by prosecutor or judge unless he chooses to do so. However, should he decide to testify, he is subject to cross-examination and could be found guilty of perjury. As the election to maintain an accused person's right to silence prevents any examination or cross-examination of that person's position, it follows that the decision of counsel as to what evidence will be called is a crucial tactic in any case in the adversarial system and hence it might be said that it is a lawyer's manipulation of the truth. Certainly, it requires the skills of counsel on both sides to be fairly equally pitted and subjected to an impartial judge. By contrast, while defendants in most civil law systems can be compelled to give a statement, this statement is not subject to cross-examination and not given under oath. This allows the defendant to explain his side of the case without being subject to cross-examination by a skilled opposition. Judges in an adversarial system are impartial in ensuring the fair play of due process, or fundamental justice. Such judges decide, often when called upon by counsel rather than of their own motion, what evidence is to be admitted when there is a dispute; though in some common law jurisdictions judges play more of a role in deciding what evidence to admit into the record or reject. At worst, abusing judicial discretion would actually pave the way to a biased decision rendering obsolete the judicial process in question — rule of law being illicitly subordinated by rule of man under such discriminating circumstances.
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