scholarly journals The Prosecutorial Origins of Defence Counsel in the Eighteenth Century: The Appearance of Solicitors

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Langbein
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Adversary System ◽  
Defence Counsel ◽  
Anglo American

IN the 1730s English criminal procedure abandoned its centuries-old rule forbidding the defendant in cases of felony to be assisted by counsel. The judges began to allow counsel to examine and cross-examine witnesses on the defendant's behalf, presaging the beginnings of the distinctive Anglo-American adversary system of criminal trial. This article points to two innovations in pretrial practice in the early decades of the eighteenth century that motivated the judges' decision: (1) the increasing influence of solicitors in investigating and preparing witnesses for institutional and private prosecutors; and (2) the growing danger of false witness in prosecutions inspired by a series of reward statutes enacted from 1692 onward. These developments – one-sided lawyerisation and the incentive for false prosecution – unbalanced the old lawyer-free criminal trial and led the judges to allow the assistance of counsel to offset the new advantages of the prosecution.

Truth-Telling in the Eighteenth-Century English Courtroom

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Oldham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
Adversary System ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Truth Finding

Mirjan Damaška, in his 1973 comparative study of criminal procedure in the Anglo-American and continental traditions, asserts that “the continental non-adversary system of procedure is more committed to the search for truth than is the Anglo-American adversary system.” He reasons that the stronger procedural obstacles to truth-finding in the adversary system derive from a collective horror of convicting innocent people.

Scales of Justice: Defense Counsel and the English Criminal Trial in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

1991 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Beattie
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Defense Counsel ◽  
Trial Procedure ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Right

My subject is the story of the entry of lawyers into the English criminal courts and their impact on trial procedure. Until the eighteenth century lawyers played little part in the trial of felonies in England—in the trial, that is, of those accused of the most serious offenses, including murder, rape, arson, robbery, and virtually all forms of theft. Indeed, the defendants in such cases were prohibited at common law from engaging lawyers to act for them in court. In the case of less-serious crimes—misdemeanors—defendants were allowed counsel; and those accused of high treason, the most serious offense of all, were granted the right to make their defense by counsel in 1696. But not in felony. Accused felons might seek a lawyer's advice on points of law, but if they wanted to question the prosecution evidence or to put forward a defense, they had to do that on their own behalf. The victim of a felony (who most often acted as the prosecutor in a system that depended fundamentally on private prosecution) was free to hire a lawyer to manage the presentation of his or her case. But in fact few did so. The judges were generally the only participants in felony trials with professional training. They dominated the courtroom and orchestrated the brief confrontation between the victim and the accused that was at the heart of the trial.

scholarly journals Reciprocal Disclosure in Criminal Trials: Stacking the Deck against the Accused, or Calling Defence Counsel's Bluff

1969 ◽  
pp. 715
Author(s):  
Brian Edward Maude
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Defence Counsel ◽  
The Right

The author discusses the effect reciprocal disclosure would have on the accused's right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself. As these rights are strongly entrenched in Canada's judicial system, the author examines if there is room to incorporate defence disclosure into Canada's criminal trial proceedings. A review is made of other jurisdictions where some degree of reciprocal disclosure is in place, and the limitations of introducing similar procedures into the Canadian system are discussed. The author concludes that the introduction of reciprocal disclosure would be a moderate expansion of already existing notice requirements, and defence counsel should start to introduce their own guidelines with respect to defence disclosure.

scholarly journals ACTUAL QUESTIONS ABOUT INVESTIGATOR'S WORK IN LATVIAN CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (80) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Marina Sumbarova
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Criminal Procedure Law

In this article author considers the questions connected with activity of the investigator at investigation of crimes, gives the characteristic of his procedural activity, defines his legal status in Latvian criminal procedure, characterizes important functions that this participant of criminal trial has. Along with consideration of a legal status of the investigator in criminal trial of Latvia, the analysis of the relevant procedural characteristics connected with investigation of criminal trials has determined the scientifically based directions in modern educational process of Latvia by training of specialists lawyers and, in particular, investigators. As a results of a research are given offers to change separate standards of the Criminal procedure law.

‘The Asylum of Liberty’

2020 ◽  
pp. 287-336
Author(s):  
D.H. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Order ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Free People

This chapter shows how ideas about Britain’s unique destiny shaped shifting conceptions of American identity during the imperial crisis. The conflicts of the mid-eighteenth century bequeathed to colonists the hope of British hegemony in the European world. This hegemony was to be geopolitical, but also cultural, reflecting the triumph of a Shaftesburian Anglo-French Kulturkampf over the Berkeleian idea of Anglo-American translatio imperii and translatio studii. The sense of America’s contribution to this destiny acted as an important catalyst for the development of a discretely American sense of corporate honour. This process was intensified by the idea of British guardianship over an international order of free states, which allowed colonists to identify themselves with a brotherhood of free people as an alternative to the British imperial community, grounded in new understandings of history that undercut the traditional mores of Hanoverian loyalism.

Sigonio in Anglo-American Projects to Reform the Imperial Constitution, 1751–1777

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Long Term Impact ◽  
Intense Debate

This chapter explores Carlo Sigonio’s long-term impact by zooming in on the nascent United States of America. It shows that Sigonio was seen as a leading comparative constitutional historian and one of the most cited authorities that would-be reformers turned to in the intense debate on the reform of the British imperial constitution in the second half of the eighteenth century. His analyses of the Roman Empire yielded timeless lessons for metropolitan and colonial administrators alike. Most importantly, Sigonio structured his studies of Roman, Athenian, Hebrew, and medieval Italian laws and customs in a way that revealed these complex historical states’ constitutional essence, making comparative analysis possible. This chapter shows why American lawyers, British politicians, and merchants and soldiers with a true British–American identity, explicitly drew on Sigonio’s analysis of Roman colonization in several reform plans for the British Empire, with particular attention to the American colonies.

Pietism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen C. Guelzo
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
State University ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Evangelicalism ◽  
The Church

‘Pietism’ refers to a Protestant reform movement, arising in the late 1600s in Lutheran Germany, which turned away from contests over theological and dogmatic identity in Protestant confessionalism and urged renewed attention to questions of personal piety and devotion. As such, it has only the most tenuous historical connections to the Christocentric piety of the devotio moderna or the northern humanist piety of Erasmus or Zwingli. It found its first major voice in P.J. Spener and A.H. Francke, and established its principal centres of influence at the state university at Halle in 1691 and the Moravian community at Herrnhut in 1722. Pietism found followers and allies in the European Reformed churches, in the Church of England (especially through the example of John and Charles Wesley and through the Moravian exile community in England), and in Britain’s English-speaking colonies. In the colonies, pietism not only found Lutheran and Reformed colonial hosts, but also saw in New England Puritanism a movement of similar aspirations. Pietism’s impact on the spirituality of western Europe and America was clearly felt in the eighteenth-century Protestant Awakenings, and continues to have an influence in the shape of Anglo-American evangelicalism.

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