영미 형사변호인의 지위와 역할에 대한 비판적 검토

As on-going criminal justice reform has been showing a remarked tendency toward Anglo-American Law in Korea, the role of criminal defence counsel will be more important than ever. In Anglo-American legal system, it is widely recognized that defence counsels have played very important roles to defend criminal defendants and embody justices in criminal trial. Nevertheless, they have been also condemned because of their excessive initiative in criminal procedure and tenacity for victory in adversary system. Particularly, defence counsels' extravagant use of their initiatives in criminal court and distortion of actual facts sometimes have been one of the main causes of obstruction to embodiment of justice and proper criminal administration. And there have been many kinds of alternative proposals among them reinforcing judge's controlling powers in criminal court has been widely approved and has been actualized in some jurisdictions. There have been a variety of patterns of criminal procedure to democratize the process and to build broader public confidence in justice system. Though the Anglo-American system and the Continental system including Korean have many external similarities in organization of justice, there are more different realities between the two systems, such as functions, authorities, and so on, which arise from the different understandings about criminal justice and dissimilarities of judicial history, circumstances, and cultures including people's legal consciousness. In Korea, with the recent recognition of the importance of justice system reform, the emphasis of the role of defence counsel in the criminal procedure tends to be on the increase. Although the moral justification of their roles and functions and vigorous defences can't be resisted, the embodiment of them in justice system requires deliberate considerations of the above elements and overseas experiences. In this respect, the realities and the criticisms around criminal defence counsels in the U. S. and the U. K. are considerably instructive and helpful to pave the way for more desirable criminal justice system in this field.