Most magistrates are lay magistrates and are known as justices of the peace. There are about 30,000 and they sit as benches of 3. They mostly preside over criminal cases, in magistrates courts all over the country. They are appointed by the Lord Chancellor on the advice of advisory committees for each area. Sometimes vacancies for magistrates are advertised, in local papers, others are recommended to the area committee by local area organisations. Others may just apply for the post themselves. These magistrates work for free, 26 days of the year minimum, but some give much more time than this. Even though they are not legally qualified they undertake work out of a sense of citizenship and recognize the need for lay representation in the legal system.
Magistrates are legally entitled to time off work but employers are not obliged to pay for this time. If magistrates do however lose pay as a result of sitting, they can claim loss of wages and travel expenses. Magistrates have to attend training courses and watch other magistrates working before they can sit themselves. After this they may have to attend occasional training to learn more skills or update to newer legislation. Many magistrates will develop some kind of specialization in a specific field, like family work or traffic offences.
Magistrates’ civil jurisdiction consists of licensing and family matters and some debt work. The youth court is also part of civil jurisdiction, so magistrates may have to deal with youth crimes. In criminal cases they conduct summary trials, sentence defendants who plead or are found guilty, and hold committal proceedings in indictable offences and hybrid offences when the defendant has opted for a trial in the crown court. Magistrates also grant bail, issue warrants and hear appeals from their clerk’s refusal to grant legal aid. So overall they have a varied jurisdiction. As magistrates are lay people they have access to advice from the court clerk. Many clerks are not themselves qualified, though the clerk of the justices must be a qualified barrister or solicitor.
b. Discuss the value to the English legal system of lay magistrates. (15)
Lay magistrates are indeed very valued members of the English legal system for many reasons. For the government, magistrates are a much cheaper way to administer justice than using juries or professional judges. In this way they save the country enormous amounts of money and it would then be very hard to replace them. This is because any alternative would need more funding, which may take money away from more important areas.
Magistrates are also seen to preserve lay representation, and so instill confidence in the public of the legal system. This way the administration of justice does not just fall into the hands of solicitors, barristers and judges. There local knowledge is also a very important factor, as they understand the need of the people in their local community. This is then seen to create a fairer administration of justice. And, although magistrates tend to be middle class it is thought that they are closer to the defendants as they are party of the same community.
The fact magistrates have improved training programmes is a large advantage to them. These are operated by the magistrates’ committee of the judicial studies board and are compulsory to all magistrates. This means that although they don’t have extensive knowledge, magistrates are constantly being updated with common areas of law that come before them. So in this respect they are being trained all the time.
Although there are some very strong advantages, the magistracy is not without its flaws. It is widely argued that magistrates are very unrepresentative of the community as a whole. It is thought that they are mostly middle-aged, middle-class and middle-minded. This is the case, because more of these categories of people actually come forward to be magistrates. This being because they may have the sympathy of there employers of they may indeed be at a stage where work is not a priority for them, so they have the spare time. They are also more likely to be unrepresentative of the political view of the nation as conservative magistrates outnumber labour magistrates by 4:3. It is also unrepresentative ethnically, with ethnic minorities not being as well represented as they should be.
Magistrates are also seen to be inconsistent with other benches of magistrates up and down the country. This is in the case of the sentence passed so people committing the same offence in different places may be treated differently. This is because of all the cases being seen over daily it is very difficult to digest and collate all cases together in order to achieve complete consistency. But this can be an advantage as mentioned above as the magistrates in a local area cater for the need of their locality. If their area is notorious for traffic offences then they are more likely to have a higher sentence rate for such an offence, than say an area which has low traffic offences.
They are also argued to be more likely than juries to convict. This could be seen from the point of view that defendants who are not guilty are more likely to choose a jury trial, so leaving the guilty who plead non-guilty to the magistrates. It is also seen that it takes more to convince 12 people than it does 3.
Overall I feel that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but this is not to say that improvements shouldn’t be made because they should. But in conclusion of the facts above it is clear that magistracy offers lay representation in the legal system, because the law needs regular people as well as lawyers. It is also very much a heritage in the English legal system and would be immensely expensive to replace. So on this note it is better that it is kept and indeed improved.
