Protection of Defendant's Rights in the Criminal Procedure in light of Public choice Theory

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Criminal Law and Criminology

2 Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Public choice theory could be defined as the study of Politics based on economic principles. This theory generalizes the assumptions of market behavior of individual agents such as rationality and self-interest maximization to the behavior of public enforcement agents like criminal justice officials. According to this theory, these authorities would not always behave in line with the interests of the society and might be tempted to pursue their own self-interest. This could lead to the breach of the defendant's fundamental rights, an increase in the number of false convictions and would impose irreparable costs on the criminal justice system. In this paper, we seek to answer this question of why it might be desirable for the criminal procedure to be strongly biased in favor of the defendant. Based on public choice theory, pro- defendant procedure would make it more costly for the self-interested officials to use the criminal process to obtain their own ends. It would also provide a mechanism for preventing the rent-seeking behavior of such officials. Constraining this sort of behaviors is likely to direct the criminal justice system to promote social welfare.

Keywords

References

 
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