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Priceless Process: Nonnegotiable Features Of Criminal Litigation, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Article, Professor Nancy King develops an approach for determining when judges should block the efforts of criminal litigants to bypass constitutional and statutory requirements other than those already traded freely in traditional plea bargains. Devices for classifying nonnegotiable requirements, including the concept of "jurisdictional error," have lost their utility. Clearer rules about which deals are enforceable and which are not would increase certainty in bargaining and reduce disparate treatment of similarly situated defendants. King argues that the interests of third parties or the public may justify restrictions on bargains in criminal procedure, and she traces the stubborn persistence …