NCJ Number
197125
Date Published
2002
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This chapter addresses the current relationship between lay magistrates and district judges within the judiciary in England and Wales and the effect on their relationship based on the adoption of recommendations under the Lord Justice Auld Report (2001), as well as the Home Office Sentencing Framework Review or Halliday Report (2001).
Abstract
In England and Wales, lay magistrate courts deal with approximately 96 percent of all criminal cases. The English and Welsh criminal court system relies on lay decision-making to a greater extent than any other criminal court system in the world. In this chapter, the author addresses the relationship between lay (lay magistrates) and professional members (district judges) of the judiciary through his own research (Morgan and Russell, 2000) and recommendations made under the 2001 Lord Justice Auld Report. The chapter begins with a review of how lay and professional members of the court judiciary currently work with and relate to each other and how reasonable the Auld Report recommendations are based on the current working relationship. The Auld Report makes three major recommendations with implications for the role of lay magistrates and their relationship with the professional judiciary: (1) the magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court should be vertically integrated to form a unified criminal court system; (2) the tribunal in the new District Division should be comprised of a professional judge as chairman and two lay magistrates dealing with cases of medium seriousness; and (3) the jurisdiction of the summary courts, the Magistrates’ Division, should remain as it is with the balance of lay magistrates and district judges hearing cases within the Division. Based on numerous findings, it was determined that radical change as recommended through the Auld Report would likely encounter great opposition. It was noted that most district judges rarely sit in mixed panels with lay colleagues, and since the cases allocated to lay magistrates and district judges overlap, it is possible systematically to compare their performance and decision-making. If the principle recommendations of Auld Report are adopted, lay magistrates will stand on the threshold of critical change. If lay magistrates decide not to involve themselves in sentence review or District Court proceedings, they run the risk of encouraging the trend presently underway, that of relegating lay magistrates to hearing minor cases. References