The Legal System of the uk

England and Wales have a single system of law and courts, and Scotland has a system of its own, although there is a substantial identity in many points. The legal system of Northern Ireland is similar to that of England and Wales.

The first thing to notice about all the systems is that there is no civil code and no criminal code. The law as a whole consists partly of statutes, or Acts of Parliament, and partly of common law which may be said to be made up of past decisions of judges. A large part of the civil law is not contained in statutes at all but made up of a mass of precedents, previous court decisions, interpreted in authoritative legal textbooks. By now, however, almost all actions for which a person may be punished are actions which are specifically forbidden by some statute or other, with the statute usually including a provision for maximum penalty. It is almost as there were a sort of criminal code scattered through a large number of laws.

The courts and lawyers have a strong tradition of independence from the government. There is no Minister of Justice, though the Lord Chancellor, who is effectively the head of the legal profession, is always a member of the cabinet.

Ex. 56 Read the text about types of courts in England and Wales and fill in the diagram that follows:

Courts in the uk Criminal courts

The most common type of law court in England and Wales is the magistrates’ court. There are 700 magistrates’ courts and about 30,000 magistrates (Justices of Peace, or JPs). JPs are usually unpaid and have no formal legal qualifications, but they are respectable people who are given some training. A court normally consists of three lay magistrates who are advised on points of law by a legally qualified clerk. Magistrates’ courts try the less serious offences (about 95 percent of criminal cases are disposed of in these courts) and conduct preliminary inquiries to determine whether there is enough evidence to justify the trial of a person accused of a serious offence. They may not impose a sentence of more than six months imprisonment or a fine of more than ₤2,000.

More serious criminal cases then go to the Crown Court, which has 90 branches in different towns and cities, and is presided over by judges, who are trained as barristers, as there is no separate training for judges. All trials in the Crown Court are held with a jury of twelve citizens randomly selected from the local electoral rolls. The judge must make sure that the trial is properly conducted, that the counsels for the prosecution and defence comply with the rules regarding the evidence that they produce and the examination of witnesses. Underlying the whole process lies the assumption that the accused is presumed to be innocent unless the prosecution can prove guilt “beyond all reasonable doubt”.

A person convicted in a magistrates’ court can appeal against its decision to the Crown Court. An appeal against the decision of the Crown Court may be taken to the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), but it is seldom successful. The Court of Appeal dislikes overturning a Crown Court decision unless the evidence is overwhelming or there has been some error in the legal procedure.

The highest court in the land is the House of Lords, which will consider a case referred from the Court of Appeal where a point of general public importance seems to be at stake. In practice the Lords are represented by five of the nine Law Lords. They are professional judges who have been given life peerages.