Legal regulation of the plea bargain through the lens of harmonization of criminal law and criminal procedure norms
Keywords:
Plea Bargaining, Negotiated Justice, Substantive–Procedural Coherence, Criminal Law Harmonisation, Judicial Oversight, Comparative Criminal Procedure, Proportionality PrincipleAbstract
The proliferation of plea bargains across various legal systems has resulted in significant changes to the structure of criminal trial proceedings and has generated substantial debate regarding the interrelationship between efficiency and legality in the administration of criminal justice. Although prior research has examined the use of plea bargains from an analytical perspective by examining either the extent to which such arrangements conform to principles of procedural fairness or are subject to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, there have been few studies conducted in order to evaluate the structural relationships that exist between substantive criminal law and procedural regulation in this context. Through the development of a comparative, coherent analytical model to examine the degree to which plea bargains remain consistent with the hierarchical structures of criminal responsibility, the author conducts a comparative analysis of thirteen jurisdictions that represent three different types of legal traditions (i.e., adversarial, inquisitorial and hybrid) in order to identify patterns of substantive-procedural inconsistency. In addition to conducting a comparative analysis of legislative frameworks and judicial reasoning, the author also evaluates the potential for plea bargains to be compatible with legality and proportionality and demonstrates that their legitimacy will depend upon their explicit inclusion within the doctrines of criminal law as well as their inclusion within the doctrine of criminal law. The author finds that codification models tend to provide greater levels of normative stability than do decentralized or discretionary models. Finally, the author provides a typology of normative conflict and operational indicators that can be used in comparative criminal law scholarship and as a basis for evaluating the feasibility of implementing European criminal law harmonization.
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