Criminal defence rights in a global context

Abstract

The right to fair trial is one of those motherhood and apple pie, feel good, aphorisms that no-one, and no government, can seriously disagree with. However, it is often preceded with ‘of course’ – as in ‘of course fair trial is important’, and then often followed by ‘but’ – as in ‘but the system must be efficient’. As soon as you begin to ask what it means, and particularly if you ask what it means in terms of the rights of those suspected or accused of crime, the picture rapidly becomes clouded. In the United Kingdom, and in many other countries, the rise of managerialism and the ‘discovery’ of victims as a political constituency has meant that whilst lip-service is paid to fair trial, the importance of defence rights in the criminal process, both as a substantive aspect of human rights and as a key element of the right to fair trial, has been side-lined if not forgotten.