An international conference on psychology and law in Dublin this week will discuss the relative merits of the European and Anglo-American systems of justice and the assessment of children's evidence.
The joint conference of the American Psychology-Law Society and the European Association of Psychology and Law in Trinity College will open today with a daylong "trial", presided over by Mr Justice Moriarty, debating the adversarial versus the inquisitorial systems of justice. It will be attended by 524 delegates from all over the world, including 19 European countries, the US, Canada, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Mr Justice Moriarty is both a judge of the High Court, which operates according to the common law adversarial system, and the sole member of the second Payments to Politicians Tribunal, which has been operating according to a more inquisitorial model. Most EU countries have legal systems based on the inquisitorial model, where judges guide a substantial amount of the investigation.
Mr Justice Moriarty will be joined on the judges' panel by Prof Roger Park and Prof Steven Goldberg from the US, and a part-time judge and university professor, Mr Hans Nijboer from Leiden University and the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam. They will hear arguments about the respective merits of the criminal legal systems in the Netherlands and Nebraska, supported by witnesses for both sides.
The conference will be formally opened this morning by the President, Mrs McAleese, who was a law professor.