Ideology in Criminal Procedure or a Third

Abstract

American thought about criminal procedure is confined within a prevailing ideology. By describing an alternative, I shall seek to illustrate that our present assumptions are not the inevitable truths they often seem to be. The alternative presented is not especially novel, nor is it one to which I necessarily subscribe. My purpose is merely to explore the problem of ideology in criminal procedure, and to that end the self-conscious posing of an alternative is justified by its heuristic value.