Is criminal justice in the United States all that different from criminal justice in other countries? The answer is clearly Yes. Defining conceptually the many ways how it differs is a complex, and perhaps academic, exercise. But given the increasing importance of transnational criminal investigations that compel prosecutors and others outside of the United States to deal with American procedures, it is becoming more and more urgent that the practical impact of these differences be understood.

Compared with the United Kingdom and countries whose legal traditions derive from it, the differences from US procedures may appear to be small. The United States shares not only the same language (and language is an extremely important component of law, as revealed by the challenges of translation) but also many important traditions derived from its English heritage; as a result, the vocabulary used in the two countries is often the same or similar.