Fair Trial and Defence Rights in Criminal Matters: An Introduction

The purpose of this article is to give a comprehensive and clear presentation of the international human rights framework relevant to the right to a fair trial. This article also has focused on the right to a defence and the rights of the defence in international human rights law. The legal sources referred to in this article are the major international legal instruments dealing with the right to a fair trial. In order to find examples and more detailed explanations, it also refers to the case-law developed by some of the international bodies in charge of looking at complaints from individuals, i.e. mostly the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee, in charge of applying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) from 1966 and the European Court of Human Rights, which is the most relevant international human rights mechanism for more than forty European countries. Some of the international standards that the article refers to are actually legally binding for the countries which are parties to them; that is the case of the ICCPR. Others are belonging to the category of soft law, as for example the basic principles on the role of lawyers established by the United Nations, which are not as such legally binding, but participate in creating a larger legal framework1. It is this framework which is presented in this article in order to understand the coherence of the safeguards that have been put in place concerning criminal proceedings. It is important to point out at the fact that the right to a fair trial has both overall implications and very concrete and detailed implications. As to the overall implications, the right to a fair trial hangs over all other human rights and it can be advocated that all human rights comprise procedural rights as an inherent part of their effective protection. The very concrete, detailed implications concern among others more technical arrangements of proceedings before domestic courts. The article begins with some short introductory remarks on the right to a fair trial (I), then it envisages the right to a defence (II) and the rights of the defence or defence rights (III). It shall be underlined that this article only deals with criminal proceedings. As a matter of fact the relevant provision of the ICCPR focuses on criminal charges and proceedings; in an European context, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) relates in the first place to proceedings concerning the determination of “civil rights and obligations”. However, most of its provision concerns, as in Article 14 of the ICCPR, criminal charges.