Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

I'm arguing for the right to call for a trial by jury, not mandatory trial by jury. For most offences it will just be trial by magistrate, as it is now. But if someone is in a politically sensitive trial (such as those silly buggers with the orange powder at stonehenge or the "we support Palestine Action" crowd, I think it is only right that they can call for a trial by jury.

I agree, Jury trials are essential to the administration of justice in a common law jurisdiction.


I also agree that it is not helpful for someone to argue that civil law jurisdictions don't have jury trials so it's all OK. The criminal law and procedure is fundamentally different in those countries.

[Sheilbh]

I agree, Jury trials are essential to the administration of justice in a common law jurisdiction.

Something it seems Keir Starmer agreed with when he was a humble barrister writing for the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers house mag, Socialist Lawyer (that feels like more of a defined term than an appealing title ), back in 1992 when he called for all trials to be jury trials regardless of the expense

I think that's going too far. I don't mind raising the bar of what is just heard by a magistrate and what can be heard by a jury (as well as what must be heard by a jury). Similarly there have been numerous white collar and complex fraud trials that have collapsed here because of the sheer complexity and volume of evidence (I think one lasted for two years before it fell apart - I think those cases are unreasonable for a jury and actually better suited to a judge.

So I don't mind some reform and I'm not a jury absolutist but murder, rape, manslaughter and certain "public interest" cases is far, far too narrow.

[crazy canuck]

I agree, Jury trials are essential to the administration of justice in a common law jurisdiction.

Something it seems Keir Starmer agreed with when he was a humble barrister writing for the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers house mag, Socialist Lawyer (that feels like more of a defined term than an appealing title ), back in 1992 when he called for all trials to be jury trials regardless of the expense

I think that's going too far. I don't mind raising the bar of what is just heard by a magistrate and what can be heard by a jury (as well as what must be heard by a jury). Similarly there have been numerous white collar and complex fraud trials that have collapsed here because of the sheer complexity and volume of evidence (I think one lasted for two years before it fell apart - I think those cases are unreasonable for a jury and actually better suited to a judge.

So I don't mind some reform and I'm not a jury absolutist but murder, rape, manslaughter and certain "public interest" cases is far, far too narrow.

Agreed, the UK could have just gone with the reforms we made some time ago and refined through judicial scrutiny.

No need to reinvent the wheel.

One of my pet peeves is that governments don't fund law reform commissions anymore (or rarely-we have one that looks at our provincial labour code every five years).  It used to be that reforms like this were well researched and carefully considered by a range of subject matter experts, who then report a report to advise the law makers.  Now it's just politics.

[Sheilbh]

The Law Commission is still running here. Their proposals aren't always picked up but often is because it's normally quite unsexy, relatively technocratic changes. So their current research program covers:

Agricultural tenancies
    Commercial leasehold
    Consent in the criminal law
    Deeds
    The defence of insanity
    Desecration of a corpse
    Management of housing estates
    Ownerless land
    Product liability
    Public sector automated decision-making

Which is fairly (admirably) varied I can imagine some of those becoming fairly contentious but a lot won't.

And as I say in this case the government got a report on criminal justice by Sir Brian Leveson, former President of the Queen's Bench Division and Head of Criminal Justice. He looked at Canada, New Zealand and Australian territories (I don't fully know why but Australia is always very popular with judges as a persuasive authority in the UK). The government's plan if they stick to it is to apparently go way, way beyond his recommendations.

Although to Jos' points I think there is a very good reason Leveson limited his comparators to other common law jurisdictions.