Rumba Justice and the Spanish Jury Trial

The present Chapter tries to trace the influence of American criminal procedure on European legal institutions through a case study of the Spanish jury system, which was loosely modeled on that of the United States. What kind of changes did this legal transplant bring about? Commentators often insist that American influence has made European criminal procedure more “adversarial”. The Author contends that in the present case, far from diffusing American practices and making the Spanish system more adversarial, the American import actually strengthened the non-adversarial structure of Spanish civil law. In identifying the dynamics by which Spain absorbed and adapted the American jury system, the Author would like to suggest further inquiry into the hypothesis that similar patterns of transformation may characterize other “adversarial” law reforms in Continental Europe.