The victim in law - the emergence of a new juridical subject in the crime conflict

peer-reviewedThere has been growing recognition of the interests and needs of victims in the law arena, where previous emphasis had been predominantly on the rights of the accused and the offender.1 The result, in Ireland and in other jurisdictions, has been a series of developments which seek to enhance their status in relation to the alleged wrongdoing. Via the deliberative capacity of domestic and EU legislatures drawing upon the (admittedly imperfect) opinion and will formation of its citizens,2 together with expansive judicial interpretation of constitutional and convention texts, we are slowly discovering that rights in the criminal process are not confined to an exclusive caste, anchored to a fixed date in history.SUBMITTEDpeer-reviewe