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7 - Court Reform and Comparative Criminal Justice

from Part II - Court Reform on Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2019

By
David Nelken
Edited by
Rosann Greenspan ,
Hadar Aviram  and
Jonathan Simon
Rosann Greenspan
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Hadar Aviram
Affiliation:
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Jonathan Simon
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

Malcolm Feeley’s Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail (Feeley 1983) is a monograph based on his report commissioned by the Twentieth Century Fund. The book may be less well known than both many of his earlier and later cutting-edge monographs (see e.g. Feeley 1979, or Feeley and Rubin 1998). But returning to it for the purpose of contributing to this collection made me realize just how good a read it is. Feeley offers us a meta-evaluation of selected court reforms from the 1950s to the 1970s, analyzing the problems that the reformers sought to resolve and the flaws in the solutions that they invented. Following a thoughtful introduction, the central chapters take us through the history of efforts to introduce bail reform, extend pretrial diversion, curb sentence disparities and expedite speedy trials.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Legal Process and the Promise of Justice
Studies Inspired by the Work of Malcolm Feeley
 , pp. 139 - 151
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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