e common law of England. Most of these protections of the accused are incorporated into the American Bill of Rights, which have been held by the Supreme Court to be applicable to the states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
French Perspective. The French system of criminal procedure developed from a somewhat different perspective. Darby says that "at one time in the distant past the Anglo-Saxon and Continental systems of criminal law were identical, but in the seven centuries which followed the Fourth Lateran Council's papal ban on clergy participation in trial by ordeal, the two systems have proceeded along quite different lines." From the outset the French system was strongly influenced by the Roman law tradition, with its pro-state orientation. Since the time of the French Revolution, the French criminal justice system was dedicated in part to the preservation of individual liberty, as declared in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1790), which are stated in general terms in French Constitutions, most
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