The modern adversarial criminal trial emerged from the punitive and procedural upheaval in the criminal law of the first half of the nineteenth century. The campaign against capital punishment, which marked the century's early decades, stimulated procedural reform, including the enactment in 1836 of the Prisoners' Counsel Act. The 1836 Act enabled defence counsel for the first time to address the jury in felony trials. It generated a unique debate in Parliament, the press and the legal professions on the merits and dangers of advocacy. This book examines the debate and the practical implications of procedural reform for the conduct of criminal trials. The topics discussed include the increasing sophistication of prosecution and defence advocacy, the beginnings of modern professional ethics and the conscious rationalisation of adversary procedure as the best means to discover the truth.
This is the first scholarly work to analyse the practice of advocacy and to identify its significance for the administration of justice. It includes case studies of four major criminal trials which demonstrate the interrelationships between advocacy and procedure in the making of the adversarial criminal trial.
This is the first title of a new series, Oxford Studies in Modern Legal History, which, under the general editorship of Professor Brian Simpson, will publish outstanding monographs on legal history covering the period 1750 onwards.
This book is concerned with the evolution of the modern criminal trial. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the criminal trial changed beyond recognition to attain its modern adversarial form. This innovative new book, the first of a new series, Oxford Studies in Modern Legal History, discusses the dynamics of this transformation and, in particular, the role of the Prisoners' Counsel Act 1836. The 1836 Act enabled defence counsel for
the first time to address the jury in felony trials, and generated a unique debate in Parliament, the press and the legal professions on the merits and dangers of advocacy. This is the first scholarly work to analyse the practice of advocacy and will hold great appeal for all legal historians, scholars of social
history and the history and theory of crime and punishment.
excellent book ... David Cairns' study of the early nineteenth-century criminal trial makes compelling reading. It is a thorough and highly readable piece of scholarship which convincingly calls for a realignment of our perspective on the critical historical steps which led to the emergence of English criminal adversarial procedure.
