Introduction

Criminal justice systems are barometers of social development. This claim, put forward by German criminal law scholars, alludes to the fact that inherent in the criminal justice process are conflicting interests between the need to ensure comprehensive fact-finding on the one hand, and the wish to safeguard individual rights, especially those of defendants, on the other hand. In all criminal justice systems, there exists a strong public interest in determining the truth due to the assertion that a determination of innocence or guilt is based upon “true” facts. This pursuit of “the truth” has led to procedural rules that expose both suspects and witnesses to coercive measures that often interfere with individual rights. In recent decades, human rights have come to the forefront in criminal justice systems around the world, but at the same time more and more jurisdictions have adopted exclusionary rules. Country reports on Germany, Switzerland, P.R. China, Taiwan, Singapore, and the U.S., along with contributions discussing the rationales behind exclusionary rules, legal practices, or potential alternatives, all address the question of whether, and under what circumstances, the use of exclusionary rules can be an effective means for protecting human rights in criminal proceedings