Explain how lay magistrates and district judges are selected and appointed.

The first 200 words of this essay...

A) Explain how lay magistrates and district judges are selected and appointed

Lay magistrates are ordinary people who have no legal qualifications that serve on as part of a bench in the magistrate's court. If the English legal system were based just around professional judges then the whole justice system would deteriorate. This is why Lay Magistrates, also called Justices of the Peace or Lay Justices, are employed. There are currently 30000 magistrates who volunteer to work.

There are approximately 1600 Lay Magistrates appointed each by the Lord Chancellor on recommendation of the Advisory Committee set out in the adapted Justices of the Peach Act 1997. There are over 100 Advisory Committees around the England and Wales that recommend names to the Lord Chancellor who formally appoints them through a letter. This shows that the Lord Chancellor relies a lot on the Advisory Committees because they have the local knowledge needed and the ability to asses and interview potential Lay Magistrates locally. In the Advisory Committee there should be at least 12 members and at least one person in the committee should be from each major political party and some members who should be politically independent. Also one