A Review of Renaud Colson’s and Stewart Field’s ‘The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Comparing France with England and Wales’

Abstract

This book opens with forewords by two of the most exceptional contemporary legal minds in the English and French legal systems: Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the first president of the UK Supreme Court, and Robert Badinter, former president of the Conseil constitutionnel, eminent scholar and politician known for his tireless contributions on criminal justice and human rights issues. Lord Phillips finds that “this is an erudite comparative study of recent reforms to the English and French criminal justice systems”, which shows how “reforms have brought the two systems closer together”, thus being “of interest to those who have been brought up to consider the two systems as dissimilar as chalk and cheese” (p.7).