Guilty Pleas in International Criminal Law

The field of transitional justice is entering a new phase born of several decades of experience and a maturation of the practical and theoretical engagement with the complex set of problems involved in facing past atrocities. Guilty Pleas in International Criminal Law: Constructing a Restorative Justice Approach focuses attention on the issue of guilty pleas in international criminal law as an area of legal practice that merits additional attention, investigation and inquiry. ‘Guilty pleas’ are processes through which a defendant accepts legal responsibility for a crime without undergoing the process of a full trial. ‘Plea bargaining’ is a type of guilty plea in which the complexity, cost and substantial investments of time and money involved in a full trial are avoided by negotiating a deal with a defendant where s/he accepts guilt in return for a reduced penalty or accepts guilt for a lesser charge, which tends to also involve a reduced penalty. While this process is extremely common within the US legal system – where it is used to resolve 75 percent to 90 percent of all criminal cases – the mechanism is not accepted in many legal systems and is widely viewed in a very critical manner by scholars and practitioners around the world. For many, plea bargaining contradicts the most basic principles of justice and rule of law in that it valorizes efficiency over the formal determination of guilt or innocence through a trial

Criminal justice · Criminal law · Criminal procedure · Criminology · Economic Justice · Innocence · Negotiation · Plea · Political science · Restorative justice · Sociology · Theory of criminal justice · International Law and Human Rights · Law