Advocacy and the Making of the Adversarial Criminal Trial 1800-1865

The modern adversarial criminal trial emerged from the punitive and procedural upheaval in the criminal law of the first half of the nineteenth century. This is the first scholarly work to analyse the practice of advocacy and to identify its significance for the administration of justice. 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.

David Cairns is a practices international commercial arbitration with B Cremades Y Asociados in Madrid. He studied at the universities of Canterbury, Toronto and Cambridge.