Explain how judges are appointed and how the courts and legal service act 1990 along with other acts have affected the selection and training, also discuss the argument that judges are old white and mainly male who are out of touch with society.
Extracts from this document...
Introduction
Explain how judges are appointed and how the courts and legal service act 1990 along with other acts have affected the selection and training, also discuss the argument that judges are old white and mainly male who are out of touch with society. By Jab Rakeem Plan Explain criteria of System of Solicitors, Barristers to judges. Secret Soundings? What is the Legal service act? Who and how do they set them up? What is contained in the 1990 legal service act? What other acts are there which has affected training and selection? Why are judges' old white males? 87% are male. What are the trends in the past/future? Why are they out of touch with society? What has made them become out of touch? What reforms should be taken to keep them in touch with society? In the English Legal system, there are two classifications of judge. The superior judge and an inferior judge. Inferior judges consist of District judges, Circuit judges and Stipendiary judges. ...read more.
Middle
A particular judge is chosen over another judge because of their views. This is because a superior judge is very difficult to dismiss. In fact the only way to dismiss a superior judge is if they retire, misbehaviour, persistent failure to comply with sitting requirements without good reason, failure to comply with training requirements or sustained failure to observe standards reasonably expected from a judge. These standpoints are found out using a process called secret soundings. They occur deep in the chambers of other leading judges, who criticise or praise the upcoming barristers and solicitors, and feed this information back to the Lord Chancellors offices. There, files are compiled on particular candidates and the Lord Chancellor chooses which ones are suitable to employ. The Lord Chancellor then takes these names and gives them to the Prime Minister, who has to ask the Queen whether or not he can let them sit as Supreme judges. Although this system is very informative, there are several problems with it. ...read more.
Conclusion
If you look at the top of the legal system, you have the judges; this is a very simplistic view of what the legal profession looked like 10 years ago. The hugely dominant old, conservative males show a very old fashioned look at the legal system, but this shows us what the pattern of solicitors and barristers looked like in the 1990's. We know this because the way lawyers are selected for the judiciary. The Lord Chancellor selects them, by 'secret soundings' and they are chosen from 'high flying' lawyers. Therefore, the solicitors and barristers of that time will show what range of people we will have on the judiciary, at present. Nevertheless, with the new intake of law students to become solicitors and barrister, this shows a good spread of ethnic minorities and sexes. In 5 to 10 years time the legal systems judges will be multi-ethnic and multi-sex. We just need to give the solicitors and barristers time to work up to be those judges. This would create the lawyers that this country needs in the future. ...read more.
The above preview is unformatted text
This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level Legal personnel section.
Found what you're looking for?
- Start learning 29% faster today
- 150,000+ documents available
- Just £6.99 a month
Here's what a teacher thought of this essay
3 star(s)
Overall, a dated essay. The student structures it well though.
More emphasis should be made on the impact of lack of diversity where it might be important eg. race-related criminal offences, abortion, youth-oriented offences etc.
Marked by teacher Edward Smith 18/07/2013
