Cross-fertilisation between civil law countries and common law countries: The importance of judicial dialogue in criminal proceedings

The article addresses the need for judicial dialogue among common law and civil law jurisdictions in different criminal justice systems as part of the cross-fertilisation process in the field of human rights and criminal proceedings. The analysis is based on a case study of the introduction of the adversarially oriented Criminal Code of Proceedings in Italy and on the result of interviews with judges in Europe. The article argues that, in criminal matters, there is an inadequate horizontal judicial dialogue across civil law jurisdictions and common law jurisdictions. This lack of dialogue reduces understanding of other legal systems, so that the judiciary is ineffective and slow in responding to a demanding new role in a wider, globalised legal regime.