Law 798:  Comparative Criminal Procedure

This seminar will address a variety of hotly debated issues in comparative criminal procedure, including the regulation of undercover policing, plea bargaining, the sentencing role of criminal juries, the entrapment defense, and the jurisprudence of the European Court of  Human Rights and the U.S. Supreme court on the Confrontation Clause. The seminar will look at the ways in which these issues are addressed in the United States and a number of western European legal systems, along with occasional excursions into the treatment of these issues in other legal systems around the globe.  We will explore the ways in which plea bargaining, the entrapment defense, and Confrontation Clause requirements affect the choice of investigative tactics across legal systems and the selection among alternative mechanisms for regulating investigations, plea bargaining trials, as well as the sentencing process of the criminal justice system. Many of the issues covered in this seminar raise questions about the methods and limits of transnational cooperation in criminal investigations. A comparative approach to the topics we will cover will make it possible to examine the ways in which different national approaches affect the choice of mechanisms by which law enforcement agencies collaborate across national borders.  

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: Assignments will include one short paper and one longer term paper.