The “Right” to a Fair Trial

The right to a fair trial is commonly considered so central to our system of justice and so much a part of our legal heritage that to deny that people in general have any such right might seem tantamount to impugning our legal traditions as a whole. The right to a fair trial might seem an unimpeachable example or “paradigm case” of what we mean by a “right” and certainly it is so widely believed that people have such a right that to claim they generally do not strikes one initially as absurd. I hope nonetheless to present reasons for thinking that people do not in fact generally have a right to a fair trial. Here as elsewhere something similar is true instead, and I hope at least briefly to suggest a proper approach to justification for fair trials as well as to dispute the justification most commonly offered.

Volume 2, Number 2 (1978)