Testimonial Evidence : Comparative Research between France and United States of America

France and United States of America do not have the same criminal justice system. France is a country with an inquisitorial system, whereas United States of America has an adversarial system. To be able to understand the study of the regime of the proof, one has to know the difference between those two systems. The adversarial system (or adversary system) of law is the system of law, generally adopted in common law countries like the United States of America, that relies on the skill of the different advocates representing their party's positions and not on some neutral party, usually the judge, trying to ascertain the truth of the case. Unlike this system, the inquisitorial system that is usually found on the continent of Europe among civil law systems (ie. those deriving from the Roman or Napoleonic Codes like the French one) has a judge or a group of judges who work together whose task is to investigate the case before them . This primordial difference makes the study of the regime of the testimonial evidence very attractive.
According to this definition, we see that in America, the testimony is very broadly used because the search of the proof takes place mainly during the trial. Unlike this system, the French one is more inquisitorial, so the research of the proof occurs before the trial (usually in the “dossier”).

The main question is the following : what are the differences between the American system and the French one concerning the admission of testimonial evidence ?

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