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This article argues for a re-orientation of the debates concerning plea bargaining in the light of a process of re-legitimation currently under way in which professional codes of ethics are given new importance. In the new rhetoric, plea bargaining is claimed to be in line with rather than contrary to traditional adversarial principles. The focus of this paper is to argue for a re-affirmation of deep-seated principles which contextualize professional ethics in the wider domain of the politics of criminal justice.A fundamental re-legitimation of plea bargaining is under way, the effect of which is to obscure, behind a mask of professional ethics and classical moralism, a process based on a culture of extortionate relationships which extract crude cost/benefit actuarialism from everyone involved. Earlier justifications of plea bargaining, deemed inconsistent with classical notions of legal rationality, are being replaced with new justifications in which plea bargaining is depicted as coming to fulfil rather than defeat adversary principles. The means by which this is being accomplished are the commodification of cases and the juridification of defendants; and a vital element of this process is the notion of professional ethics. Professional ethics, in this context, do not resolve ethical conflicts; rather, codes of conduct become a way of managing the system's inherent contradictions and obscuring the practice of criminal justice which, in turn, more and more derives its moral justification by reference to the codes.In this article, I want to suggest both that judicial and professional discourse around plea bargaining should be deconstructed and that more attention should be given by commentators to the politics of criminal justice.

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