The hearsay rule and the constitutional right to confrontation

John Hatchard ()

Chapter 11 in Proving Corruption and Defending the Corrupt, 2025, pp 209-228 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The accusatorial system is based on witnesses giving oral testimony as to facts of which they have personal knowledge. This allows their opponents to cross-examine them in order to test their reliability, accuracy, and truthfulness and for the court to assess their evidence and their demeanour. When they are unavailable to give oral evidence at the trial, the accused's constitutional right to confrontation is breached and, unless an exception applies, any previous statement made by the witness will be inadmissible as contravening the rule against hearsay. This chapter argues that the right to confrontation is not absolute and that the hearsay laws in many Anglophone African countries are outdated. It therefore calls for the development of a general test for admissibility based on the interests of justice and the fairness principle.

Keywords: Right to confrontation; Rule against hearsay; Interests of justice test; Hearsay evidence and international cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035307463
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035307470.00018 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22101_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().