David Lammy, the Justice Secretary of the UK, plans to cut the number of jury trials in England and Wales. Under the plans, jury trials will be reserved for cases in indictable-only offences such as murder or rape, and either-way offences - those where the defendant can currently decide whether they will be tried by a jury or magistrates.
There has been a large backlash from this. Unsurprisingly from the opposition, ministers such as Robert Jenrick have espoused their disgust at it taking 18 months for Labour to address this problem (after 14 years of Conservative power).
What I found more interesting was the backlash I saw across news outlets regarding this decision. Claims of our fundamental justice system now being illegitimate for the first time since 1215. Clause 39 of the Magna Carta states that: no free man shall be punished except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. I wonder what these people think of the torture and political imprisonments that have happened in the intermediary years. Or the fact that women and serfs were not included in the original terms.
It's not like our current judicial system does not heavily rely on magistrates currently. Over 90% of court cases are already handled in magistrates courts. Magistrates courts took in roughly 1.37 million cases in 2023; the Crown court took about 105,0001. Do we also want to be judged by a jury of our peers? The past decade hasn't exactly filled me with confidence in the average person's ability to make correct decisions based purely on evidential reason.
Change is required. The state of our judiciary is a disgrace, with only 1 in 60 rape cases resulting in a charge2. One of the primary contributors to this is the up to 4 year wait times victims must endure before they can see justice. Barristers in rape cases now advise their clients to claim not guilty, knowing the gridlock in the courts will likely lead to charges being dropped by the victim.
Although Lammy is selling the other side with equal amounts of wishful thinking. Judge-only swift courts are being pitched as a technocratic fix, reducing trial time to rapidly reduce the backlog. However, most of the delay is not in the few hours a jury spends deliberating, but in the lack of courtrooms, judges and lawyers, and repeated cuts in funding.
I am also not fully convinced what replaces juries is better. Magistrates are volunteers, not randomly selected citizens. They sit regularly, building up habits, and skew older and whiter than the population. A 2016 Commons report found around 89% of magistrates were white, and they have been described as 'white, middle-class, middle-aged people sitting in judgement over young, working-class and often black defendants'.
I don't think expanding judge-only trials up to three-year sentences is the end of English liberty. The system is already subtly authoritarian when it keeps victims and defendants in limbo for years. But I also don't buy the idea that gutting jury trials is a simple dial. If we make this trade, we should be explicit about it. We are choosing speed over lay participation.
To misquote Churchill: juries are the worst form of justice, except for all the others that have been tried.