Foreword – The ‘Truth in Criminal Justice’ Series

This special issue of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform contains a series of reports-the ‘Truth in Criminal Justice’ series-that reexamine a variety of basic issues in the law of criminal procedure and evidence. In publishing this series, the editors of the Journal have made an important and timely contribution to the national debate over the character and future development of criminal justice in the United States. There is an abundance of legal writing on criminal justice issues, but relatively little of it concerns increasing the system’s effectiveness in bringing criminals to justice or doing justice for the actual and potential victims of crime. At a time when the criminal jurisprudence of the courts and academic writing on criminal procedure are largely devoted to elaborating a judicially created system of restrictions on law enforcement that has emerged since the 1960s, these Reports reflect a commitment to the ideal of criminal investigation and adjudication as a serious search for the truth. From this perspective, they challenge a number of basic features of contemporary procedure that conflict with the achievement of accurate verdicts and substantive justice.