French justice on trial

BBC Radio 4's Law in Action was broadcast on Tuesday, 28 February, 2006 at 1600 GMT.

For the last few months, France has been gripped by an enquiry into a massive miscarriage of justice. 13 people from the town of Outreau, near Boulogne, were wrongly imprisoned on suspicion of running a paedophile ring.

One man killed himself in custody. The scandal has focussed attention on the role of Fabrice Burgaud, the young investigative magistrate in charge of the case. Why, critics ask, should a judge like Mr. Burgaud have so much power?

There are now calls for a move away from the inquisitorial system of criminal justice, towards an adversarial system, like that in Britain where the two sides argue it out.

We discuss the pros and cons of the two systems with a brace of lawyers who know them both. Joelle Godard is a French lawyer now working as an academic at the University of Edinburgh and Duncan Fairgrieve is a British lawyer who works as an avocat in Paris.