Prosecutors and Democracy A Cross-National Study

Focusing on the relationship between prosecutors and democracy, this volume throws light on key questions about prosecutors and the role they should play in liberal self-government. Internationally distinguished scholars discuss how prosecutors can strengthen democracy, how they sometimes undermine it, and why it has proven so challenging to hold prosecutors accountable while insulating them from politics. The contributors explore the different ways legal systems have addressed that challenge in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. Contrasting those strategies allows an assessment of their relative strengths - and a richer understanding of the contested connections between law and democratic politics. Chapters are in explicit conversation with each other, facilitating comparison and deepening the analysis. This is an important new resource for legal scholars and reformers, political philosophers, and social scientists.

Introduction Máximo Langer and David Alan Sklansky; 1. Discretion and accountability in a democratic criminal law Antony Duff; 2. Accounting for prosecutors Daniel C. Richman; 3. The democratic accountability of prosecutors in England and Wales and France: independence, discretion and managerialism Jacqueline Hodgson; 4. The French prosecutor as judge. The carpenter's mistake? Mathilde Cohen; 5. German prosecutors and the Rechtsstaat Shawn Boyne; 6. The organization of prosecutorial discretion William J. Simon; 7. Prosecutors, democracy, and race Angela J. Davis; 8. Prosecuting immigrants in a democracy Ingrid V. Eagly; 9. The better politics of prosecution Jonathan Simon; 10. Unpacking the relationship between prosecutors and democracy in the United States David Alan Sklansky; Epilogue: prosecutors and democracy - themes and counterthemes Máximo Langer and David Alan Sklansky.

Máximo Langer is Professor of Law and Director of the Transnational Program on Criminal Justice at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. He is an expert in comparative and international criminal justice. His work has been translated into several languages and has received awards from multiple professional associations, including the American Society of Comparative Law.
David Alan Sklansky is Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford University, California, Law School and Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. He previously served on the law faculties at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley, and is a former federal prosecutor. He is the author of Democracy and the Police (2008).