The adversarial system is a recognized and legal procedure in the U.S. law, where two lawyers represent their parties’ cases in court before an impartial person. Usually, the advocates represent a party before a jury or judge, who attempt to understand and determine the truth to help pass a judgment accordingly. The adversarial system limits millions of Americans from humble backgrounds who cannot afford a lawyer or a chance to get justice. Therefore, technology, simplification of the court language, and elimination of lawyers from lower crimes are the primary solutions to the adversarial system problems that the U.S. is facing presently.
Notably, technology is the first solution that can help overcome the problems in affiliation with the adversarial system. According to Fisher (2018), it requires an hour of an advocate’s service when technology is embraced, hence becoming cheaper for every individual to seek a lawyer’s services. Technology has the potential of reducing the time that the plaintiff and the respondent spend in the justice corridors. Arguably, technology will surpass the adversarial system barriers, hence helping to provide better procedures and subsequent substantive justice. Connectedly, technology is the ultimate solution that will ensure fairness for all people throughout the country by reducing the time parties spend in court and enhancing lawyer affordability despite parties’ economic status.
Additionally, simplification of the court language is another solution that can help in ensuring justice for all and consequently defeating the present menace of an adversarial system that is receiving colossal criticism. Fisher (2018) states that simplifying processes and terminologies will help people understand the court proceedings. Throughout the U.S., people opt to hire a lawyer to represent them in their court cases because they do not comprehend the court terminologies. The court uses multiple vocabularies that are often complicating to the individuals despite meaning simple things that they know. Thus, simplifying the court language and phraseology is a prudent solution towards ensuring that justice is served to all Americans impartially.
Besides, the elimination of lawyers from lower crimes remains another solution to the adversarial system’s problem. Fisher (2018) reiterates that one cannot compare a respondent or plaintiff with an advocate to another party who does not have one. In other words, having an advocate in the U.S. is an added advantage of winning a case despite deserving conviction. The adversarial system receives criticism that lawyers are ‘hungry’ for money and can represent and manipulate the final judgment or verdict of the different small cases (Fisher, 2018). Suggestively, small subjects such as those involving divorce and even family-related feuds should be presented by the accuser and the defendant only, allowing the judges to make a just verdict. Therefore, lawyers’ elimination is a potential solution to the adversarial system problem.
Historically, the American system of jurisprudence developed the adversarial system to make the justice process fairer and parties less prone to abuse. Kagan (2019) depicts that the adversarial system aimed at replacing the inquisitional approach because it gives less room for the state to embrace biasness against the respondent. The adversarial approach aimed at giving private litigants room to settle their conflicts amicably through pre-trial and discovery settlements, whereby there is an agreement of non-contested facts not dealt with during the trial. The adversary system existence has retrogressively changed the U.S. courtroom to playing grounds or battlefields. Holistically, the adversary system, through which legal disputes are settled in the U.S., is raising the idea that legal controversies are competitions where parties fight to win using the different available resources.
Conclusively, it is prudent noting that the solutions to the adversarial system’s problems are embracing technology, using a simplified language and terminologies in court, and equally banning lawyers from representing clients of lower crimes. U.S. legal system and justice failed in the allowance of an adversarial system of jurisprudence. The adversary system makes people compete in terms of the available resources, hence parties winning cases unfairly. Above all, there is a need for the U.S. to formulate other alternatives that can ensure that citizens receive justice and trust the courts.
References
Fisher, A.F. (2018). A simpler and less adversarial system would be more just. The Regulatory Review. Web.
Kagan, R. A. (2019). Adversarial legalism: The American way of law. Harvard University Press.