John Upton

George Carman QC, the best known British advocate of his time, died of cancer on 2 January last year. Shortly afterwards, the Daily Telegraph published an obituary which listed the famous criminal and libel cases he had won, and examined his ferocious court-room reputation before concluding: ‘Away from work, Carman was a reasonably enthusiastic guest on the party circuit, but...

The Labour Government is about to embark in its second term on a radical and repressive programme of legal reform. If the proposals contained in the White Paper Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead are implemented, the Government will have succeeded in dismantling some of the fundamental safeguards which exist to protect defendants in the criminal justice system. Labour’s view seems to be...

‘A bastard is a bastard no matter what,’ says the man who gives me directions to Peckham Library. It is about three o’clock in the afternoon, on a steel-grey day two weeks after the death of Damilola Taylor. The centre of Peckham is thronged with police officers, all wearing high-visibility luminous yellow vests, and with equipment strapped around their waists on webbing...

We might well think of 2000 as the year of emotional justice. In Private Eye last month a cartoon of a suited man being chased by a group of youths bore the caption: ‘I’m a paediatrician.’ That same week, a woman was besieged in her home by a group of youths who daubed the word ‘Paedo’ on her wall. She was of course a paediatrician. Whichever way we turn, we see populist measures outlined or tabled by politicians, populist judgments delivered in the courts, and unthinking, vengeful behaviour on the ground. Two cases stand out: those of Myra Hindley and Sarah Payne. In both public fury has prevailed over fairness, the interests of the bereaved over those of the community as a whole.‘

We’re all used to watching gritty TV dramas about the crown court with bewigged barristers, mumbling judges and gullible juries. These higher courts are familiar to us and if we were actually to visit them, we would recognise the courtroom (‘Not as good as in Kavanagh’) the waiting area (‘Tosh from The Bill was in one a bit like this last week’) and the formalities (‘It’s just the same as in Rumpole’), but the magistrates’ court is different. It is the place where summary justice is dispensed. If the offence you have committed is not serious enough to merit a trip to the crown court, and the vast majority of offences are not, the magistrates’ court is where your case will be heard. In fact the great majority of cases are dealt with by magistrates. This means that either three lay people or one professional magistrate (a stipendiary or ‘stipe’, as the lawyers call them) listen to your case, decide whether it is proven or not and pass sentence. This is where I am today.