American legal lore would have it that our adversarial (or "accusatorial") criminal justice system is far superior to the "inquisitorial" model of continental Europe-as an engine of truth, as a shield for civil liberties against state power, as an embodiment of the paramount importance of avoiding wrongful conviction of the innocent.

Many of us are taught (erroneously) that, in Europe, defendants are presumed guilty, can be forced to confess, and can be convicted without anything like proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

And something about that word "inquisitorial"-conjuring images of some medieval Grand Inquisitor torturing confessions out of accused heretics-conditions American lawyers (and justices) to recoil from any thought of modifying our adversarial tradition by taking even a tiny step toward the procedures used by the rest of the civilized world.

Evidence is accumulating, however, that our adversarial system has degenerated into a parody of itself-which in many cases seems almost calculated to subvert the search for truth. And there’s much to be said for the European approach, including that of England, where the criminal process has evolved in far less adversarial directions than our own since 1776.

A good case can be made that the procedures used in Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, France, England, and elsewhere do a better job than our own not only in terms of finding the truth and convicting the guilty, but also in terms of protecting innocent defendants-supposedly our forte. Comparative analysis also reinforces the view that some of our vaunted procedural protections not only help the guilty, but also have perverse secondary effects mat hurt the innocent.

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding 12 men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read." -Mark Twain

Some good could yet come of the O.J. Simpson trial, though many lawyers and judges are bent on preventing it.

That something is the kind of fundamental reform of our dysfunctional criminal justice system that could be fueled by public outrage at the Simpson trial and acquittal-not to mention the trials of the Menendez brothers, Lorena Bobbitt, the Rodney King cops, and Reginald Denny’s assailants.

Such reform won’t come easily, both because the public may seize upon illusory cures like non unanimous jury verdicts and because the prospect of any reform at all spurs knee-jerk opposition from many lawyers by threatening to unsettle roles in which they have grown prosperous and comfortable.

"What people should understand," such lawyers are wont to say, "is that the Simpson case was entirely atypical, skewed by the ability of a wealthy defendant to pull out all the stops, and by the inability of a wishy-washy judge to move things along. In most cases, the system works well."

It’s true that this was an atypical case. It’s not true that the system usually works well. The problems are simply stated: Our criminal justice system convicts the innocent too often, acquits the guilty (especially the wealthy guilty) far too often, punishes many nonviolent criminals too harshly, rewards tactics aimed at distorting the facts and obfuscating the truth, is choking on waste and inefficiency, and is held by much of the public in justifiable disrepute.