There are many differences in how cases are reviewed. It is questionable whether the results would be different if cases were conducted using the different approaches; In fact, there are no statistics that could show whether these systems would lead to the same results or not. However, these approaches are often a matter of national pride, and there are opinions among lawyers about the merits of different approaches and their drawbacks. Proponents of inquisitorial justice dispute these points. They point out that many cases in adversarial systems, and most cases in the United States, are actually resolved through plea bargaining or settlement. Plea bargaining as a system does not exist in an inquisitorial system. Many court cases in adversarial systems and most in the United States do not go to trial, which can lead to injustice if the defendant has an unqualified or overworked lawyer, which is likely the case if the defendant is poor. In addition, proponents of inquisitorial systems argue that the plea bargaining system causes participants in the system to act perversely, encouraging prosecutors to lay charges far beyond what is warranted and defendants to plead guilty even if they believe they are not. Rules of evidence are also developed on the basis of the opponents` system of objections and on the basis of which they tend to interfere with the factual judge, who may be the judge or jury.
In a sense, the rules of evidence may be used to confer limited inquisitorial powers on the judge, since he or she may exclude evidence that he or she considers untrustworthy or irrelevant to the point of law at issue. One of the most important differences between the adversarial system and the inquisitorial system occurs when an accused admits the crime. In an adversarial system, there is no longer any controversy and the case results in a conviction; although in many jurisdictions the accused must have a summons for his crime; A manifestly false confession is also not accepted by an ordinary court. On the other hand, in an inquisitorial system, the fact that the accused has confessed is just another fact to be used as evidence, and the confession of the accused does not relieve the prosecution of the obligation to present a complete case. This allows plea negotiations in adversarial systems in a way that is difficult or impossible in the inquisition system, and many crimes in the United States are dealt with without trial by such plea negotiations. The inquisitorial system is associated with civil law legal systems and has existed for many centuries. It is characterized by thorough preliminary investigations and interrogations, with the aim of avoiding bringing an innocent person to justice. The inquisitorial trial can be described as an official investigation to uncover the truth, while the adversarial system uses a competitive process between the prosecution and defense to establish the facts. The inquisitorial process gives more power to the supervising judge, whereas in the adversarial system, the judge serves more as an arbiter between prosecution and defence claims (Dammer & Albanese, 2014; Reichel, 2017). The right to legal assistance in criminal proceedings was not initially accepted in some adversarial systems. It was believed that the facts should speak for themselves and that lawyers would only confuse matters. As a result, England did not give crime suspects the formal right to a lawyer until 1836 (Prisoners` Counsel Act 1836), although in practice English courts systematically allowed defendants to stand trial from the mid-18th century.
She was represented by a lawyer in the nineteenth century. In the second half of the 18th century, lawyers such as Sir William Garrow and Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine, helped introduce the adversarial judicial system used today in most common law countries. In the United States, however, since the adoption of the Constitution, court-appointed lawyers have had the right to appear in state cases in all federal criminal cases and at least since the end of the Civil War, although almost all of them provided for this right much earlier in their constitutions or state legislation. The appointment of attorneys for impoverished defendants was nearly universal in federal criminal cases, although it varied considerably from state to state. [4] It was not until 1963 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state courts must provide counsel at state expense to relieve offenders under the Sixth Amendment. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).
Peter Murphy reports an instructive example in his Practical Guide to Evidence. A frustrated judge in an English (adversarial) court finally asked a lawyer after witnesses made contradictory statements: “Should I never hear the truth?” “No, sir, just the evidence,” the defender replied. The two systems are different throughout, as different countries have changed their criminal procedures in different ways over the years in order to balance the interests of the state in arresting and convicting offenders with the interests of citizens who may be involved in the trial. As this module will show, these different legal traditions influence the way criminal cases are examined and prosecuted. The role of prosecutors may vary depending on the legal tradition of a given country. Two types of legal traditions dominate the type of investigation and jurisprudence in the world: adversarial and inquisitorial legal systems. Common law countries use an adversarial system to establish the facts in the decision-making process. The prosecution and the defence compete with each other, and the judge serves as an arbiter to ensure fairness to the accused and to ensure that the legal rules of criminal procedure are followed. The adversarial system assumes that the best way to get to the truth about a case is through a competitive procedure to accurately determine the facts and the application of the law. In an adversarial system, judges are impartial when it comes to ensuring fair play in the application of due process or fundamental justice.
These judges decide, often at the request of counsel rather than ex officio, what evidence is admissible in a dispute; However, in some common law countries, judges play a more important role in deciding what evidence is included or rejected in the record. In the worst-case scenario, abuse of judicial discretion would actually pave the way for a biased decision and render the trial in question obsolete – the rule of law is illegally subordinated to human domination in such discriminatory circumstances. Proponents of the adversarial system often argue that the system is fairer and less prone to abuse than the inquisitorial approach because it leaves less room for the state to be biased against the accused. It also allows most private litigants to resolve their disputes amicably through pre-trial investigations and settlements in which undisputed facts are agreed upon and not dealt with during the court proceedings.