To what extent is it still true to say that legal justice in England and Wales rests upon adversarialism?

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To what extent is it still true to say that legal justice in England and Wales rests upon adversarialism?

Introduction

In the past, legal justice in England and Wales has rested upon adversarialism a great deal more than today. There have been many changes within the English legal system that seem to have in some way damaged the adversarial process. In this assignment I strive to examine these changes by using examples of adversarialism both being successful and detrimental to the English justice process. As the word justice and adversarial apply to both aspects of law (criminal and civil) then, of course, I will mention the changes in both but the bulk of this essay will be based on the effects within the civil legal system.

What do we mean by ‘adversarial’ and ‘justice’ within criminal and civil law?

 

 The word ‘justice’ is controversial and takes many definitions within law but in this instance, I will mainly concentrate on how the English legal system uses adversarialism to achieve justice and research to what extent the use of the adversarial process has changed within the fast developing UK legal system.

The word ‘adversarial’ has several meanings but the most plain of these is, “one side against the other.” Within law, adversarialism is a battle over which side or story is believed.

Firstly, there are two approaches for attempting to achieve fairness within the criminal legal system; these are due process and crime control.

Due process concerns the fact that what may be injustice for the public or victims will not necessarily be injustice for the lawyer. It is a systematic method which, is designed to minimize the convictions of innocent people therefore achieving its aim of fair dealing.

Crime control on the other hand, although is used to gain a higher conviction rate, has seen a high rise in wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice.

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The due process method is said to be used within the French legal system. In France any one who seems able to provide evidence against a crime or civil matter is then taken into custody without the right to a lawyer or a phone call. Although the French use “inner certainty” and “proof beyond reasonable doubt” when dealing with criminal and civil matters, their policing and questioning processes seem to be controversial to the due process guidelines. On the other side, in Japan, there is a 99.9% conviction rate from using a crime control method, although these statistics are ...

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