ABSTRACT

The United States (US) Sixth Amendment expressing, as it does, the right to confrontation, sets the international high water mark for the requirement that witnesses be present in court for cross-examination. Testing witnesses by cross-examining them is absorbed into the centrality of fair trial norms in numerous human rights instruments and it links, indeed one might say secures, the fair trial requirement that justice be open and public. Since the late twentieth century law reform has removed numerous pernicious elements of law and practice. The prosecution was marked by tardy and lack lustre police investigation and an attenuated trial process. The chapter explores the rights of women of Islamic faith who wish to testify whilst fully veiled. Trial fairness may be defined in human rights instruments and by the common law through defence rights, but it should not be assessed in a vacuum disengaged from democratic and communitarian values.