ABSTRACT
Modern democratic states use one of two forms of trial procedure. Countries that follow the common law, including the United States, England, and most former British colonies, use adversarial procedures in which the prosecution and defense gather evidence and question witnesses in front of a lay jury. The adversarial system traces its origins to the early Middle Ages, a time when legal questions were settled by judicial combats and ordeals, events whose validity rested on the idea that the results reflected God's will. The impetus for the inquisitorial system came later, with the rise of canon law in the eleventh century. Supporters of inquisitorial justice charge the adversarial system with favoring fairness to the accused over the search for truth. Defenders of the adversarial system argue that conflict between the parties is best designed to bring out the truth, and they point out the dangers posed by the concentration of power in the hands of the judge, a state official.
