Once seated in the courtroom I observed the clerk, instruct the defendant to identify themselves by name, then state the charge against them and inform the magistrates whether or not the defence had made an application for bail. In both cases I must point out that the magistrates, who are generally not overly knowledgeable about the law, appeared to rely heavily on the clerk’s understanding of not only the procedures of the court but also on points of law.
The defendant, (a 21 year old woman from Essex) was accused of causing grievous bodily harm, with intent, to a 23 year old woman in a public house in St Helens. The alleged offence happened on the evening of a fancy dress event, which was taking place in several venues across the town centre. In this instance the defendant, confined to her enclosed box, did not enter a plea and the proceedings were wound up promptly granting her bail to appear at Liverpool Crown Court.
I noticed that the advocates, dressed in suits, (as were the magistrates and the clerk) addressed each magistrate either as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ or collectively as ‘Your Worships’. When addressing their counterpart they addressed them as ‘My Learned Friend’. Such verbal communication cast an altogether official and formal shadow upon the courtroom, which was not very large at all.
The civil case that followed involved a civil debt by way of an outstanding council tax bill owed to St Helens Council by the defendant. The magistrates put the suggestion to the defendant, who had no means of arranging payment but owned a property for sale, to have the solicitor acting on their behalf to implement an irrevocable undertaking thus clearing the debt on completion of the sale of the property. I was pleasantly surprised by the way in which the case was dealt with both quickly and efficiently.
Contrary to the statistics on the national representation of judges, I felt compelled to pay special attention to the fact that two out of the three magistrates sitting were both women, and not only was the clerk a woman but also from an ethnic minority background.
Another observation was made regarding the temperaments of the personnel in court. In the civil case, both the magistrates and the clerk seemed to be considerably more relaxed than those in the criminal case, who seemed much more severe. I believe that this goes a long way to supporting the widely regarded notion that, since the establishment of the Civil Procedure Rules during the reform of 1999 following Lord Woolf’s ‘Access to Justice’ report, judges in civil cases are far more comfortable in being able to take positive control of the proceedings and manage the case in a fair and tenable manner for both parties involved.
On reflection, before my visit I hadn’t considered that Magistrates were merely ordinary members of the public, and although it did not appear that they had difficult decisions to make, they nevertheless produced, in my opinion, sound judgements.
Bibliography
Malleson, K. (2007), ‘The Legal System’, 3rd Edn, New York, Oxford University Press.
Ministry of Justice, (2007), Judicial and Court Statistics, , (Last visited 07/12/2009).
Partington, M. (2008) ‘An introduction to the English legal system’, 4th Edn., New York, Oxford University Press.
Rivlin, G. (2004), ‘Understanding the law’, 3rd Edn, New York, Oxford University Press.
Zuckerman, A.A. S., Cranston, R., (1995), ‘Reform of Civil Procedure’, London, Oxford University Press.
Court Procedures Act 2004, ss. 7 and 83.
European Convention on Human Rights, s. 1, articles 5, 6 and 7.
Judicial and Court Statistics, (2007), chapter 9, p. 171
Woolf, H, (1996), Access to Justice: Final report to the Lord Chancellor on the civil justice system in England and Wales.
