So, it might be that the parasitic generators of near identical output have got this horribly wrong. I hope so, says Nigel Morris-Cotterill

Yesterday, I read that the Lord Chancellor, the senior law officer in England and Wales, has said that he intends to remove jury trials from the Crown Court (serious offences) in cases where the maximum sentence is less than three years. Reports also say that this includes fraud.

Perhaps the towering intellect that is the Lord Chancellor has also decided to classify offences such as fraud into divisions with different penalties. It wouldn't surprise me, as the tendency of government, of both parties, a friend calls them the uniparty because there is so little difference between them, to limit the functions of the judiciary and allocating fraud into divisions does exactly that. Perhaps he plans to follow the dumb US idea of having fraud and "sophisticated fraud" which, on analysis, is an administrative classification not one of actual distinction and is indicative of the broad Left's objective of codification of law by excessive legislation.

There has long been a debate over the use of juries in complex and serious fraud but those are properly big cases. That is not the current proposal.

So, I looked: who is this Lord Chancellor. He's the deputy prime minister, not worthy of such office until a vacancy arose. He read law in London, then went to Harvard, then spent a couple of years in a US West Coast law firm and returned to London where he spent two years at a non-Magic Circle solicitors' firm (according to one report doing international work, whatever that is) and then won a seat in the "wear a red rose and become an MP" election under Blair.

Since then, he's had a variety of jobs including a talk-show host on a London radio station.

His two years in a UK law firm is just enough to finish a training contract. How and where he did his pre-qualification training is unknown. Whether he had to complete a training contract or whether there was mutual recognition from the California bar rendering qualification in England unecessary is not known.

What we do know, if the information I found is correct, is that he's had very limited experience in any aspect of law, legal systems and courts. In fact, it looks as if he's had pretty much no experience in Courts and only a brief period, where he was working towards his election, in English law at all.

So, welcome to the stage, David Lammy, a man who, it appears, is about as qualified for his post as a box of cornflakes, and yet is about to make fundamental changes to systems designed and refined over a thousand years instead of properly funding the legal system (and in doing so continues the neglect imposed over the past 30 years or so).

#england #legalsystem #courts #lordchancellor #jurytrials #fraud #morriscotterill

Lammy says that his hands are tied, or something like that. He is faced with crumbling courts and a budget that in real terms has diminished faster than the depreciation on a new Bentley.

And in both things he's right. But the solution to the problem is to fix and recommission old courthouses instead of turning them into pubs or hotels, to properly train staff (which has not been happening for decades) and to expand the number of judges by the simple expedient of un-retiring many that have left while disenchanted. The rule of law is paramount to society but its status has been a silent victim of government neglect since before Blair. Money must be found and the political will must be recreated so that the legal system can take its proper place in society.

There are changes that can be done: judges should restrict the trial to the facts of the offence and such intent as the law requires. Did you do it? Did you intend to do it? Guilty. Motive is a matter for mitigation and judges used to quickly shut down political statements. They can do it again. 

Judges need more training in controlling the evidence given in financial crime trials. As I said in the mid 1990s, to win, a defendant's easiest defence is to confuse the jury. Judges should stop that. 

The administration of trials has created a bureaucratic process that adds to the time cases take because the process must be followed. In many cases, it could be truncated or set aside.

These things should be done before a fundamental destruction of a system that has preserved human rights for almost a thousand years.