Following this concept Lord Wolf made far-reaching recommendations in his report “Access to Justice”, which was published in 1996. The Civil Procedure Act 1997 has been passed to enforce his report. The date for the full enforcement of his report was set at 1st October 1998. At the time the labour government proposed their own review of the civil justice system and Lord Wolf were asked to express his thoughts. The final review of the civil justice system in 1998 that was formed of his collaboration was in favour of functioning of Lord Wolf’s proposals. The main point of his review was to reduce the cost, the time of the secondary work of the civil proceeding system and to make justice easier for everyone to approach.
Lord Wolf most important and fundamental suggestion have been expressed in the form of the Three Track System which was made to improve the efficiency of the civil justice system. These are the Small Claims procedure, Fast Track and Multi Track system.
The Small Claims Procedure is designed to be relatively cheap, simple and fast. Claims under £5000 (£10000 for personal injury) are heard use in the Small claims procedure and the claimant and defendant are encouraged to represent themselves to lower costs. The cases are normally disposed within 10 weeks and this simplifies things for both parties too.
The Fast Track is used for cases where the claims are between £5000 and £15000 (£10000-£15000 for Personal Injury). The cases can dispose of within 20 to 30 weeks and they confined for about 3 hours. A district judge hears these and the winner will claim costs including those for legal representation.
The Multi Track system is used for cases over £15000 or lower claims of unusual complexity. The cases raising issues of public importance and can only be changed with the courts permission. Circuit judges hear these cases and use trial management by setting a timetable. They can also suggest Alternative Dispute Resolution.
However, there were some criticisms found about Lord Woolf’s reforms. Professor Zander felt that the reforms were fundamentally flawed and was very vociferous in expressing his opposition to the reforms prior to their implementation.
The main concerns Professor Zander expressed in Lord Wolf’s reform were the cause of delays, case management and the cost of the cases. Lord Woolf felt that the main cause of delay was the way lawyers adverted the system. Zander criticized this analysing saying that it is only supported by “unsubstantiated opinion” rather than real evidence. He also mentioned that not all the reasons for the delay were the fault of the system, for example, in some cases it may be necessary to wait for an accident victim’s medical condition to stabilise in order to assess the long-term prognosis. Accident victims do not need legal advice until after some accident has occurred. So, if Lord Woolf has wrongly diagnosed the cause of delays it is unlikely that his reforms will resolve these problems and this is the big disadvantage of his reform.
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the civil courts
Although Lord Wolf reformed Civil Justice System, there are still many problems in the civil court that will be encountered. One of the main problems is the cost for the court. The reforms suggested by Wolf in the 1997 Civil Procedure Act have only increased costs even though many changes have been implemented. Before you even get to court you need to pay £90 for an N1 form to launch a civil action, detailing the reasoning for your action and the compensation you wish to get. Also there are now allocating costs for the court and all these must be paid before the case proceeds on. There is very little legal aid available for the civil cases, especially since the Access to Justice Act 1999, which means that many of the working classes families cannot complete with regards to quality legal advice or even proceed with a case. Only social welfare cases are given funding and legal advice, this means that the only way for some to obtain legal funding is through private companies, using “no win, no fee” method of payment. Also, a study by Hazel Genn in 1987 showed where there is one party insured in the proceedings, they will often try to drag out proceeding and exhaust the other party financially. Professor Zander has mentioned this too. The risk of paying the winning parties legal costs can also putt off financially limited claimants.
Another problem is the complexity of cases. Legal representation is still seems to be necessary for the vast majority of people to understand the proceeding and the act accordingly. The main Woolf’s reform to simplify cases was to get Judges to use case management and be more curious, this is unfortunately not happening. Professor Zander said, “Justice has been done by a short, sharp trial with restricted oral evidence and a interventionist judge chivvying the parties to a resolution of their dispute”. He also remarked that judges do not have enough time, skills or inclination to undertake the task of the case management.
Delays are another problem in the civil court, which increases cost and deny compensation. In particular, the Small Claims procedure was a huge accumulation of cases causes massive delays. Another problem is that the fact more and more lawyers and solicitors are finding their way into small claims cases. This is causing delays as they will attempt to make cases last longer to increase their pay, also making the balance of representation dither in favour of more financially competent people and big business. The Small Claims procedure is not the only track of full delays. It can take up to 30 weeks for a fast track case to reach a verdict and even then the study has shown in all civil cases only the third of winning parties receive their damages at all.
However, even after all the attempts to reform civil court, it seems to still be flawed, biased, unjust and expensive. There are many critics of the attempt to change the system but there’s not simple solution. Lord Justice Woolf’s attempt will not be the last.
4. Understand the hierarchy of the criminal court
The Criminal Justice System is one of the most important tools available to society for the control of antisocial behaviour.
There are five main criminal courts in the Criminal Justice System: the Magistrate Court, Crown Court, High Court, Court of Appeal and the House of Lords (see diagram of the hierarchy of criminal court in Appendix 2). Criminal cases being heard in either the Crown Court or the Magistrates’ Court. In the Crown Court a judge and 12 jurors hear the case. The jurors decide the facts and verdict and the judge decides the sentence. In the Magistrates’ Court the magistrates decide the facts, verdict and point of law. The form of trial is an adversarial one, with prosecution and defence presenting their cases and interrogating each other’s witnesses, while the role of the judge or magistrates is to oversee the trial and make sure that the legal rules are followed correctly.
Lay magistrates are employed to look over the Magistrates’ Court cases. They are unpaid and do not have any legal qualification. There are panel of three lay magistrates in every case and one of them has to be a women. Clerk (a legally qualified person) assists the lay magistrates. The clerk informs them about the law. There is no Jury in Magistrates’ Court. In some cities there tends to be a District Judge sitting in the case, rather than three lay magistrates.
Crimes such as theft, possession of dangerous dogs and criminal damage are heard in the Magistrates’ Court, as they are summary offences. This means that they are less serious than indictable offences, which tend to include murder, rape and to some extend robbery.
The Magistrates’ Court also acts as a Youth Court. The court consist three magistrates who are drawn from a special panel of person who need no longer be under 65 years of age and it is usual for one or more female magistrates to be present. The Youth Court is separate from the ordinary adult court and is less formal. The parents or guardian of any child under 16 are usually required to be present at court. In contrast with the Magistrates’ Court and Crown Court, proceeding are usually private and there are strict controls on press reporting to shield the youngsters who appear before the court from unnecessary “branding” as criminals.
5. Discuss the effectiveness of the criminal courts within the criminal justice system and include examples of recent legislation.
The Government commissioned a full-scale review of the criminal courts conducted by Sir Robin Auld (a senior Appeal court judge), which was published in October 2001.
Auld’s key recommendations include:
He recommended that the law covering offences, court procedures, evidence and sentencing should be methodised. This would make the law simpler and more accessible for the legal profession and members of the public to whom these rules can be applied.
The Review recommended that a Criminal Justice Board should be established as part of the central management of the criminal justice system, and replaces all the existing national planning and operational bodies. It would provide the overall direction for the criminal justice departments and agencies in the criminal justice system. National and Local committees would also be restructures to provide a simpler and clearer management framework.
Sir Robin Auld recommended that an integrated information technology system would support a move to central joint direction, and local joint management, of the Criminal Justice Department and agencies. The Government is currently investing in information technology for the criminal justice system.
The Review proposes that there should be a move away from all forms of pre-trial hearings, instead, standard timetables would be issued and the parties would be required to cooperate with each other in order to comply with these timetables.
To insure an effective proposed reform, the government asked people to comment on this recommendation. By doing this government could found out peoples views on the report and could move on from this. Following the comments received from the public was the publication on the White Paper, which put forward the government’s idea as to what needs to be done in order to improve the criminal justice system.
The purpose of this White Paper was to send the clearest possible signal to those committing offences that the criminal justice system is untied in ensuring their detection, convicting and punishment.
So basically, Sir Robin Auld’s main concern was to remove the unnecessary complexities in the system that were slowing it down and making it inefficient. The central plank of his proposal was the creation of a middle-ranking court, called a District Division where cases would be heard by a professional judge and two lay magistrates. The Government is now considering his proposal and legislation introducing some, but not all, of his recommendation is expected in 2002 or 2003, depending on parliamentary time.
There has been, therefore, much debate over the recent legislation such as racism and police corruption:
Britain is a multicultural country and successful policing requires that all members of British society must have confidence in the police force. Following the case of Stephen Lawence (a black teenager stabbed by racist youth- who weren’t brought to justice), a judicial injury (headed by Sir William Macpherson- former high court judge) was set up by the government in 1997. Its report was published in February 1999. It discovered the metropolitan police suffered from institutional racism (a failure for an organisation to provide a professional service to people because of their colour etc.). This was reflected in the presumption (by the first senior officer) that it was because of a fight, the thoughtless approach of some officers to the parents of Stephen, the side-lining of Stephen’s friend, the refusal of accepting it was a murder case by some officers and also the offensive language used by police officers during the inquiry. Racism training seemed to be non-existent.
Another debate is a police corruption, which basically looks at the idea of criminals being able to somehow (usually through money) corrupt a police officer. Sir Paul Condon has made anti-corruption a touchstone of his term as commissioner of the metropolitan police. He estimated that there was up to 250 corrupt officers in his force. Special squads need to be set up, Like new Scotland Yard, who concentrate on corrupt police officers too can be convicted of corruption related offences or suspended for alleged corruption or similar matters.
Appendix 1
House of Lords
Court of Appeal
High Court
County Court
Magistrate Court
Appendix 2
House of lords
Court of Appeal
(Criminal Division)
High Court
(Divisional Court)
Crown Court
Magistrate Court
References
- Elliot, Catherine and Quinn, Frances; (2002); “English legal system”; fourth edition
- Keenan, Denis; (1993); “Smith & Kendal’s English Law”
