A Historical Perspective on the Acquitorial and Inquisitorial Systems
Citation: 10 Fundamina 137 2004
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A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON
THE ACCUSATORY AND INQUISITORIAL SYSTEMS
Christa Roodt (University of South Africa)
Nothing behoves us so much, in these days of reconsideration of the fundamentals of criminal procedure, as to consult experience, in the shape of the history of that subject.
Editorial preface by WE Mikell to Esmein History of Continental Criminal Procedure(1968) xxv
1
Introduction
In every criminal procedure framework, the scars of the past are ingrained.
Policies are distinctly geared to safeguard against past abuses, and the warnings of history are unequivocally valuable for our own time. The study and integration of the accusatory and inquisitorial models of criminal procedure in the twenty-first century brought about radical shifts in respect of their characteristic features.
Wthout a broad historical perspective on these systems, we shall certainly also fail to fully comprehend the social reality, purpose and significance of contemporary law reforms in the South African system. The individual historical building blocks of a system expose many of the hidden assumptions that underlie modern principles of law.
Accusatory and inquisitorial systems rest on fundamentally different assumptions about the best way of achieving speedy and fair criminal trials.1 The two systems have always differed with regard to the roles ascribed to
Content downloaded/printed from
HeinOnline (http://heinonline.org)
Mon Nov 4 07:25:01 2013
-- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License
-- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text.
-- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do? &operation=go&searchType=0
&lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=1021-545X
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON
THE ACCUSATORY AND INQUISITORIAL SYSTEMS
Christa Roodt (University of South Africa)
Nothing behoves us so much, in these days of reconsideration of the fundamentals of criminal procedure, as to consult experience, in the shape of the history of that subject.
Editorial preface by WE Mikell to Esmein History of Continental Criminal Procedure(1968) xxv
1
Introduction
In every criminal procedure framework, the scars of the past are ingrained.
Policies are distinctly geared to safeguard against past abuses, and the warnings of history are unequivocally valuable for our own time. The study and integration of the accusatory and inquisitorial models of criminal procedure in the twenty-first century brought about radical shifts in respect of their characteristic features.
Wthout a broad historical perspective on these systems, we shall certainly also fail to fully comprehend the social reality, purpose and significance of contemporary law reforms in the South African system. The individual historical building blocks of a system expose many of the hidden assumptions that underlie modern principles of law.
Accusatory and inquisitorial systems rest on fundamentally different assumptions about the best way of achieving speedy and fair criminal trials.1 The two systems have always differed with regard to the roles ascribed to