Plea Bargaining in National and International Law: A Comparative Study

Plea bargaining avoids a lengthy and costly criminal trial and thus enables courts to deal with a large number of cases very quickly. While it has often been argued that modern criminal justice systems cannot afford to abolish plea bargaining, academics long have criticised it for undermining the rule of law by avoiding procedural safe-guards. This book analyses plea bargain in different families of law, and drawing on these findings ask to what extent this practice should be developed in international criminal law.The book analyses the relationship between values and practice in modern criminal justice systems through the example of plea bargaining comparing the development and practice of plea bargaining in different systems. The book sets out in-depth studies of consensual case dispositions in the UK, setting out how plea bargaining has developed and spread in England and Wales. It discusses in detail the problems that this practice poses for the rule of law as well as well as the principles of adversarial litigation. The book considers plea-bargaining in the USA as well as in the civil law German justice system. The book also draws on empirical research looking at the absence of informal settlements in the former GDR, offering a unique insight into criminal procedure in a socialist legal system that has been little studied. The book then goes on to look at international criminal law and examine the use of informal negotiations in the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the possible use in future cases of the International Criminal Court.