The lawyer-dominated adversary system of criminal trial, which now typifies practice in Anglo-American legal systems, developed in England in the eighteenth century. Using hitherto unexplored sources from London's Old Bailey Court, Professor Langbein shows how and why lawyers were able to capture the trial, and he supplies a path-breaking account of the formation of the law of criminal evidence.

John Langbein is Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in four fields: trust and estate law, pension and employee benefit law, Anglo-American and European legal history, and modern comparative law.