ABSTRACT
Although there is a rhetorical commitment to due process values, commentators have often pointed out that English criminal process operates in favour of the prosecution. While this is perhaps generally true, we will see that there is an ongoing commitment to defence-orientated values in the common law and, in recent years, an interesting relationship between the common law and European human rights has developed. Human rights law carries within it the same tensions that we have described above. However, human rights cases do suggest new ways of thinking about the clash of values in the criminal procedural law, and the broader operation of the courts in a democratic society committed to the rule of law.
