The Right to a Fair Trial

The right to a fair trial is often held as a central constitutional protection. It nevertheless remains unclear what precisely should count as a 'fair' trial and who should decide verdicts. This already difficult issue has become even more important given a number of proposed reforms of the trial, especially for defendants charged with terrorism offences. This collection, The Right to a Fair Trial, is the first to publish in one place the most influential work in the field on the following topics: including the right to jury trial; lay participation in trials; jury nullification; trial reform; the civil jury trial; and the more recent issue of terrorism trials. The collection should help inform both scholars and students of both the importance and complexity of the right to a fair trial, as well as shed light on how the trial might be further improved.

Contents: Introduction; Part I The Right to Trial by Jury: The sacred cow of trial by jury, R.J. O'Hanlon; The courage of our convictions, Sherman J. Clark; The right to trial by jury, Thom Brooks. Part II Lay Participation: Lay participation in decision making: a Croatian perspective on mixed tribunals, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic; Democratic accountability and lay participation in criminal trials, Tatjana Hörnle. Part III Jury Nullification: The myth of the nullifying jury, Nancy S. Marder; A defence of jury nullification, Thom Brooks. Part IV Trial Reform: The lamp that shows that freedom lives - is it worth the candle?, Penny Darbyshire; The case for jury waiver, Sean Doran and John Jackson; Modes of trial: shifting the balance towards the professional judge, John Jackson. Part V The Civil Trial: Why judges, not juries, should set punitive damages, Paul Mogin; Decisionmaking about general damages: a comparison of jurors, judges, and lawyers, Roselle L. Wissler, Allen J. Hart and Michael J. Saks. Part VI Trials and Terrorism: Terrorism on trial: the President's constitutional authority to order the prosecution of suspected terrorists by military commission, Christopher M. Evans; Judicial review of counter-terrorism measures: the Israeli model for the role of the judiciary during the terror era, Yigal Mersel; Name Index.

Dr Thom Brooks is Reader in Political and Legal Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, UK. He is editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy and editor of Rousseau and Law (Ashgate, 2005), The Legacy of John Rawls (2005, 2d ed 2007), Locke and Law (Ashgate, 2007), and The Global Justice Reader (2007), as well as author of Hegel's Political Philosophy (2007) and Punishment (2009).