AMERICAN PLEA BARGAINS, GERMAN LAY JUDGES, AND THE CRISIS OF CRIMINAL-PROCEDURE

In this article, Professor Dubber critically assesses recent proposals to eradicate plea bargaining by importing the juryless and judge-domi nated German criminal trial. According to Professor Dubber, the ubiqui ty of plea bargaining, despite a constitutional guarantee of trial by jury, is symptomatic of the crisis of the modern criminal process, whi ch in. theory imposes punishment informal public trials but in practic e relies primarily on informal and nonpublic arrangements. To address this legitimacy crisis, Professor Dubber argues, the study of criminal procedure must shed its status as the poor relative of constitutional law and recover its criminal core by examining which, if any, princip les can account for, and perhaps justify, our system of punishment imp osition.