2.1 Adversarial courts

Many Global North countries such as the USA, Australia and much of the UK have what is known as an ‘adversarial legal system’, particularly for serious criminal court proceedings. Within an adversarial system, two opposing sides put forward their case, either on behalf of themselves or others, with a ‘neutral’ body such as a judge or jury then passing judgement on which set of arguments they find to be most convincing of the ‘truth’ (Cammiss, 2013). In an adversarial system, the parties in a dispute are opponents, competing to ‘win’ their case (Cotterill, 1984). Some of the key elements of adversarial court processes are outlined below:

• concerned with a legal judgement of the case
• prosecution and defence compete against one another to prove their case
• organised entirely around a particular claim or charge
• tend to be based on legal rights
• the judge’s role is limited and acts as the authority who will settle the dispute
• concerned with making a judgement on past events
• court processes and setting are formal
• often take an individualising approach to all parties involved in the case
• tend to be efficient.

Adapted from Ward (2016) and Hora (2002)