Adversarial Justice, maybe not all its cracked up to be.

Richter benutzt dunkelbraun-goldenen Hammer vor weißem Hintergrund CC 2.0 Marco Vetch 2018 BY

I am working my way slowly through “ Stories of the Law “, by the Secret Barrister and came across this,

Such as whether adversarial criminal justice is all it is cracked up to be. Whether to much — truth, dignity — is sacrificed on its alter. Whether a system that does not have as its stated aim the pursuit of truth, but instead rewards the best game player in a winner-takes- ll contest, can really be said to deliver justice in a sense understood by anyone outside of legal circles. And whether, if we have abandoned — or never even prized — truth as a guiding principle of our trials, we’re doing the gross injury to Enlightenment principles with the result that all of us — defendant , victim and society — are wronged.

The Secret Barrister

In the following paragraph, SB, makes the argument that inquisitorial systems have one fundamental weakness

Such cases demonstrate the fallacy of assuming the state is able to neutrally seek truth as opposed to aligning on its own theory and embarking on ex post facto buttressing of that narrative. And this is a criticism often levelled inquisitorial systems by those who work within: not withstanding their oxymoronic designation as ‘neutral’ prosecutors, the prosecutor and the police may bow to natural inclinations to take a partisan…