Project to Codify Criminal Procedure

In 2005 and 2006, a sub-committee of the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee was working with several members of the Cambridge Law Faculty on a project to turn the primary legislation regulating criminal procedure in England and Wales into a coherent code. In that context, in January 2006 an international conference was held in Cambridge, in order to learn about the process of codifying criminal procedure in other countries. For this conference, a number of interesting papers background papers were produced, explaining the position in other countries.

Regrettably, the codification project was abandoned, at least temporarily, as a result of the decision by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, to withdraw financial support for it. But in the hope of saving at least some of the work that had gone into the project before this happened, the Cambridge Law Faculty has decided to make a number of the papers prepared for the 2006 conference available on its website.

The following papers are available to download:

• 'Notes on criminal procedure in the US and on the federal rules of criminal procedure' : Jonathan Wroblewsky
• 'Notes on the French code of criminal procedure' : John Spencer
• 'German Criminal Procedure' : Antje Du-bois Pedain
• 'Notes on the Italian criminal procedure code' : Alessandra Gualazzi
• 'Consolidation/Codification “What should we be doing now?”' : Iain Macphail
• 'New Zealand Criminal Procedure' : Tony Smith