Adversarial Process - Adversarial Legal Process

Adversarial Legal Process

The use of an adversarial process by the criminal or civil court to decide the social attitude to an alleged wrongdoing of a defendant, penalties to be imposed, and restitution to be awarded to their deemed victim often depends on the adversarial witness questioning. This is adversarial as the opposing attorneys are competing to convince the judge to include or exclude evidence or witnesses, and competing to convince the judge or jury of the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and severity of the impact of the actions (if guilty) on the plaintiff or victim. Lawyers must be held to rather specific ethical codes, e.g. rules of civil procedure, to ensure that their tactics do not cause an undue burden on larger society, e.g. freeing defendants who have admitted that they are not only guilty but intend to offend again. Lawyers differ on whether the process should be seen as strictly adversarial, in order to ensure they retain the trust of clients and the overall process retains the trust of society, or whether the ethics of the larger society should play a role in their behavior.