The paper is a reply to two defenders of a reformed system of plea bargaining: Thomas Church and Conrad Brunk. At the broadest level, it is argued that plea bargaining is in a twofold conflict with the constitutive purposes of the liberal-democratic idea of a criminal justice system: the practice is not conducive to the punishment of the guilty in accordance with their deserts and it violates basic liberties, among them the right against self-incrimination and the right to the lowest reasonable sentence. It is argued that the value of the jury trial is insufficiently appreciated in Church's analysis. Brunk is criticized for failing to distinguish between two critical responses to plea bargaining: that the agreement made by the defendant should not be honored by the courts and that public officials act wrongfully in coercing such pleas.