Summary Of Lawyers And Their Penchant For The Adversarial

In the video, Lawyers and Their Penchant for the Adversarial, Richard Heffner and Judge Marvin Frankel on the shift of lawyer’s role in the adversarial system. He also questions Judge Frankel whether the American adversarial system is failing to serve justice due to the defense’s only desire to win their case. In the second half of the video Judge Frankel shares his opinion of how the criminal justice system should change by removing police station confessions by making inadmissible at trial.

The American adversarial system allows someone accused of a crime to be able to defend themselves against the criminal charges. There are many complexities in the legal system that require defendants to hire a defense attorney. The defense attorney’s ultimate objective is to contest to evidence presented by the
While it may seem that we are, The United States has more prisoners in jail than any other country. Despite the high number of prisoners, very few convictions happen in court. According to Judge Frankel, it is harder to get a conviction at trial in The US than any other country. The prosecutor has to a great burden to prove; he must convince the jury that the defendant committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt which can be a difficult task. Most convictions are obtained through plea bargains for lesser sentencing hence why the jail population is so high. Many defendants plead guilty because the term would be shorter even if they had a high possibility of winning their case at trial. Judge Frankel gave the example of how a defendant might sit in jail because they couldn’t make bail for a year waiting to go to trial. In order to get out of jail faster they plead guilty rather than waiting for trial and pleading innocence. With this in mind, the conclusion can be made that the system is a disadvantage, not to society but rather to people accused of