Coercion to Compromise

Dr. Mary E. Vogel is Reader at King's College London School of Law having received her doctorate from Harvard University and taught previously at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

"A magnificent achievement. Coercion to Compromise is a comprehensive, yet subtle and theoretically rich history of the origins of plea bargaining in the nineteenth-century Massachusetts courts. An important book, [it] will reward its readers tenfold."--Susan Silbey, author of The Common Place of Law"Plea bargaining has long been a controversial practice, symbolizing either unwarranted leniency for offenders and the deliberate subversion of formal legal authority, or an emphasis on efficiency at the expense of justice. Mary Vogel explores its distinctively American origins in the context of social and political change in early nineteenth-century America in a book which raises the analysis of the criminal process to a new level of theoreticalsophistication."--Dr. Keith Hawkins, author of Law as Last Resort"Coercion to Compromise is a powerful, important book. [Vogel] not only enlarges our understanding of the foundations of American criminal justice, but also illuminates the source of critical failures underlying plea bargaining in our own time. This is a pathbreaking work using the methods of social science and history to provide an authoritative and original analysis of previously uncharted terrain."--Frank Munger, author of Rights ofInclusion"This ambitious and compelling study provides a novel explanation for the emergence of plea bargaining in the American judiciary system. Vogel has written a social history of the first order and in the process sheds light on the limitations of plea bargaining in the contemporary context."--Kitty Calavita, coauthor of Big Money Crime"A magnificent achievement. Coercion to Compromise is a comprehensive, yet subtle and theoretically rich history of the origins of plea bargaining in the nineteenth-century Massachusetts courts. An important book, [it] will reward its readers tenfold."--Susan Silbey, author of The Common Place of Law"Plea bargaining has long been a controversial practice, symbolizing either unwarranted leniency for offenders and the deliberate subversion of formal legal authority, or an emphasis on efficiency at the expense of justice. Mary Vogel explores its distinctively American origins in the context of social and political change in early nineteenth-century America in a book which raises the analysis of the criminal process to a new level of theoreticalsophistication."--Dr. Keith Hawkins, author of Law as Last Resort"Coercion to Compromise is a powerful, important book. [Vogel] not only enlarges our understanding of the foundations of American criminal justice, but also illuminates the source of critical failures underlying plea bargaining in our own time. This is a pathbreaking work using the methods of social science and history to provide an authoritative and original analysis of previously uncharted terrain."--Frank Munger, author of Rights ofInclusion"This ambitious and compelling study provides a novel explanation for the emergence of plea bargaining in the American judiciary system. Vogel has written a social history of the first order and in the process sheds light on the limitations of plea bargaining in the contemporary context."--Kitty Calavita, coauthor of Big Money Crime

• 1: Plea Bargaining: A Distinctly American Practice 2: Liberty and the Republican Citizen: Rise of the Rule of Law 3: Social Order and the Law: Marxian and Weberian Views 4: Contours of Bargaining: Patterns of Plea and Confession 5: Episodic Leniency in Britain and America 6: The Emergence of Plea Bargaining Notes Bibliography Index