This book examines the origins of the controversial practice of plea bargaining, a procedure that appears to reward the guilty. Contrary to popular perception of plea bargaining as an innovation or corruption of the post-World War II years, this study shows that the practice emerged early in the American Republic. It argues that plea bargaining should be seen as part of a larger repertoire of techniques in the Anglo-American legal tradition through which law might be used as a vehicle of rule.

1. Plea Bargaining: A Distinctly American Practice 2. Liberty and the Republican Citizen: Rise of the Rule of Law 3. Social Order and the Law: Marxian and Weberian Views 4. Contours of Bargaining: Patterns of Plea and Confession 5. Episodic Leniency in Britain and America 6. The Emergence of Plea Bargaining Notes Bibliography Index

Plea Bargaining, the Courts, and the Making of Political Authority Mary E. Vogel, University of California

"A magnificent achievement. Coercion to Compromise is a comprehensive, yet subtle and theoretically rich history of the origins of plea bargaining in the nineteenth-century Massachusetts courts. An important book, [it] will reward its readers tenfold."--Susan Silbey, author of The Common Place of Law |k No