NOTES DE LECTURE

And it also bears mention that in France, as in Germany, the deliberations prior to the verdict in a criminal trial do not take place in camera, but in the presence of the three professional judges and the members of the jury. [...] When the court considers itself properly apprised of the case, the presiding judge brings the arguments to a close.” Under normal circumstances, the member of the panel who acts as a rapporteur is also the judge of the court who earlier on acted as the juge de la mise en état. [...] The selection and initial weighing of these items of evidence, and the compilation of a dossier (therefore, of a bundle of documents) which will go to the panel trying the case, are the responsibility of the juge de la mise en état, whose role replicates in civil cases what the juge d’instruction does in criminal cases. [...] Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice Toronto, October 9-11, 2013 14 German system is less different in the preparatory phase of the case: the police and the prosecutor’s office fulfill many of the functions which in France are at the initiative of the juge d’instruction. [...] Alex Stein, for example, in the third chapter of his Foundations of Evidence Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), takes the view that the overarching purpose of the law of evidence is to apportion the risk of error under conditions of uncertainty, not to “facilitate the discovery of the truth”.