Third Parties in Criminal Justice: An Everlasting Mystery in a Constantly Developing Legal World?

The evolution of criminal justice, in both national and transnational domain, reveals the multiple roles of an ever-wider range of individuals other than formal participants in criminal proceedings. Criminal inquiries in particular are increasingly characterised by the use of measures addressed against third parties, even more, new digital tools of investigation with enormous potential of interfering with an enormous and often unpredictable number of people. By means of a complex, wider-ranging approach and comparative-law method, this book has dealt with the new roles and protection of third parties. This study cuts across the results achieved by providing a reflection on the procedural thirdness in the light of a comparison between the status of third parties, the role of formal participants and the judicial impartiality. By calling into questions the traditional perspective based upon the idea of extraneousness and disinterestedness, our research proposes a substantial approach to the condition of thirdness, founded on a broader understanding of human participation in the complex experience of the criminal process.