This book provides the first detailed analysis of the decision to prosecute made by the statutory Australian Offices of Director of Prosecution. It examines the system of prosecution as part of the executive branch of government, and the role and challenges of the individual prosecutors who make decisions within the system. It explores the tension between prosecutorial independence and prosecutorial accountability, and the paradox that political involvement in prosecutions is necessary for accountability and to uphold the public interest, but can compromise independence. The book makes a unique contribution to both Australian criminal law scholarship and to the international literature on criminal prosecution, by drawing on the sub-disciplines of criminal law and administrative law. It includes case studies on prosecuting child sexual abuse, rape, and government espionage, and comparisons with common law and civil law countries including the USA, the UK, Italy and South Africa.

"Project of the American Bar Association, Criminal Justice Standards Committee, Criminal Justice Section"--T.p. verso.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Two centuries ago, American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But since then, lawyers have gradually taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting plea bargaining for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, values, and powers. In The Machinery of Criminal Justice, author Stephanos Bibas surveys the developments over the last two centuries, considers what we have lost in our quest for efficient punishment, and suggests ways to include victims, defendants, and the public once again. Ideas range from requiring convicts to work or serve in the military, to moving power from prosecutors to restorative sentencing juries. Bibas argues that doing so might cost more, but it would better serve criminal procedure's interests in denouncing crime, vindicating victims, reforming wrongdoers, and healing the relationships torn by crime.

A comparative and collaborative study of the foundational principles and concepts that underpin different domestic systems of criminal law.

In Prosecuting Human Rights Offences: Rethinking the Sword Function of Human Rights Law the author explores and explains the extent to which the features of the procedural obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish criminal attacks on human rights determine the contemporary understanding of the function of criminal prosecution. The author provides an innovative and thought-provoking account of the highly topical and largely unexplored topic of the sword function of human rights law. The book contains the first comprehensive and holistic analysis of the procedural obligation to investigate and prosecute human rights offences in the law of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the author puts in the general perspectives of human rights law and criminal procedure.

The Prosecution and Defense of Public Corruption: The Law and Legal Strategies is the first comprehensive, practice-oriented treatment of the law of public corruption in the U.S. legal market.

Our present system of criminal prosecution originated in England in the sixteenth century. Langbein traces its development, which was at its most intense during the reign of Queen Mary. He shows how the common law developed a system of official investigation and prosecution that incorporated the medieval institution of the jury trial. He places equal emphasis on the role of the justices of the peace as public prosecutors. The second half of the book compares the English system with those of the Holy Roman Empire (Germany) and France. He concludes by refuting the popular opinion that the English were strongly indebted to continental models. "This is an excellent work of scholarship, exhibiting wide research, erudition and analytical ability." --Joseph H. Smith, Harvard Law Review 88 (1974-1975) 485 JOHN LANGBEIN is Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School. He has held academic positions at Stanford University, Oxford University, the Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte and the Max-Planck-Institut für Ausländisches und Internationales Strafrecht. Langbein is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the International Association of Procedure Law, and other organizations in the fields of legal history and comparative law. Some of his most distinguished publications and articles include History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (2009), Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancient Regime (1977), and "The Supreme Court Flunks Trusts," Supreme Court Review (1991).

A study and analysis of lack of enforcement against criminal actions in corporate America and what can be done to fix it. In the early 2000s, federal enforcement efforts sent white collar criminals at Enron and WorldCom to prison. But since the 2008 financial collapse, this famously hasn’t happened. Corporations have been permitted to enter into deferred prosecution agreements and avoid criminal convictions, in part due to a mistaken assumption that leniency would encourage cooperation and because enforcement agencies don’t have the funding or staff to pursue lengthy prosecutions, says distinguished Columbia Law Professor John C. Coffee. “We are moving from a system of justice for organizational crime that mixed carrots and sticks to one that is all carrots and no sticks,” he says. He offers a series of bold proposals for ensuring that corporate malfeasance can once again be punished. For example, he describes incentives that could be offered to both corporate executives to turn in their corporations and to corporations to turn in their executives, allowing prosecutors to play them off against each other. Whistleblowers should be offered cash bounties to come forward because, Coffee writes, “it is easier and cheaper to buy information than seek to discover it in adversarial proceedings.” All federal enforcement agencies should be able to hire outside counsel on a contingency fee basis, which would cost the public nothing and provide access to discovery and litigation expertise the agencies don't have. Through these and other equally controversial ideas, Coffee intends to rebalance the scales of justice. “Professor Coffee’s compelling new approach to holding fraudsters to account is indispensable reading for any lawmaker serious about deterring corporate crime.” —Robert Jackson, professor of Law, New York University, and former commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission “A great book that more than any other recent volume deftly explains why effective prosecution of corporate senior executives largely collapsed in the post-2007–2009 stock market crash period and why this creates a crisis of underenforcement. No one is Professor Coffee’s equal in tying together causes for the crisis.” —Joel Seligman, author, historian, former law school dean, and president emeritus, University of Rochester