Theoretical Foundations of Criminal Trial Procedure

The nineteen articles and essays reproduced in this volume explore the theoretical foundations of criminal trial procedure. Key concepts, and their theoretical and practical significance, are elucidated in a substantial new introduction, setting out the methodological building blocks of criminal procedure scholarship. Central to this enterprise is an effort to rethink traditional common law conceptions of the Law of Evidence. The volume is divided into four parts, addressing disciplinary parameters, normative underpinnings, legal epistemology, and institutional jurisprudence, to create an innovative intellectual framework for theorising criminal trial procedure. It showcases classic writings on criminal procedure law and adjudication alongside the best of recent theoretically-informed procedural scholarship, thereby placing the criminal trial in its broader political, social and institutional contexts. This collection both encapsulates and develops a jurisprudence of criminal trial procedure, conceived as applied political morality, with robust epistemological foundations and attuned to the contemporary challenges of cosmopolitan law.

Paul Roberts is Professor of Criminal Jurisprudence at the University of Nottingham, UK. Paul has been visiting professor or invited lecturer at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), the University of Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the University of Gottingen, the University of New South Wales (UMSW), Sydney, and the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg), RSA. He is editorial board member of four academic journals: International Commentary on Evidence (ICE); Criminal Law & Philosophy; Law, Probability and Risk and Law and Philosophy. He was also a founding editorial board member of The International Journal of Evidence and Proof (E & P), serving as Reviews Editor (1995-2005) and General Editor (2005-9).