What type of person do you feel best to be a Magistrate and or Judge.?

Question

Judges and Magistrates seem to be so out of touch and I feel let our police system down when the culprits go to court - I think a better system would be for the average Mother or Father to be a magistrate and see if this can turn a failing system round. For sure the punishment should fit the crime - but is it....We need heads of courts as above who are from the real world.

Answer 1

I think time has come for these to be voted in..... a little like the American system. Most people want justice to be served and very little is dished out these days.

Answer 2

There are a number of points to be considered here.

Firstly, Magistrates. In England, Magistrates are not trained in Law. Their purpose is to decide whether the Prosecution have proven, without reasonable doubt, that the defendant has committed the offence. They have recourse to the Court Legal Adviser (Or Clerk of the Court) who is a qualified Solicitor or Barrister, when they need to refer to points of law.

Magistrates try minor (summary) offences. All defendents will start off in Magistrates Courts, but , if their offence is more serious, they will be committed to the Crown Courts for trial by a Judge and Jury. Any UK citizen, subject to certain age limits, can be a Magistrate, but, in fact, they tend to be drawn from the upper middle classes. This is for a number of reasons. Firstly, these classes are more frequently trained in the type of thought-process needed to reliably adjudicate on evidence. Secondly, they tend to be in the type of occupation where it is easy to get time off from work for civic duties.

Judges. These are Solicitors and Barristers who have been selected to be Judges. A lay-person cannot be a Judge.

Both Magistrates and Judges are limited in their powers both by the process of Law and by the edicts of the Sentencing Guidelines Council. Some people may consider it desirable that the boy next door who keyed some cars is sentenced to twenty years in the nick and exile to the grottier regions of Sidcup, but this sanction lies outside of the full remit of the Judiciary.

Finally, what exactly constitutes the "real world". The world, surely, is what we exist and live in, and this world is stratified into social classes, all of whom have different expectations, desires and requirements. The Magistracy and Judiciary are drawn from the better-educated, and unless we abandon any idea that education confers intellectual and cognitive advantage upon the educated (and thus sink to a slough of ignorance, lack of manners and cultural rot and decay), then those that are better educated should rightly form the Judiciary. The average mother and father will best serve the cause of justice by bringing up their children properly, with supervision, and respect for adults, education and the apparatus of the State, and, of course, not indulge in irresponsible, reckless and criminal behaviour themselves.

Answer 3

The vast majority of judges and magistrates in my experience do have children and/or grandchildren, so should have some understanding of young people. I think that perhaps judges are in many cases less out of touch than one might think, having had a career at the Bar which brought them in touch with life in the raw. In theory magistrates are supposed to be a cross section of the general public, but in practice they recommend their friends to apply and so fill the bench with people like themselves. One of the problems is finding time to sit -- it is very difficult, for example, for a teacher to get time off to be a magistrate, although a head teacher can manage it. It is something which people working in shifts can accommodate in their working life -- train drivers, actors, singers, chefs, etc. However, there are far more people who are wealthy and do not need to work on the bench. I heard of one case which involved non payment of a bus fare and because none of the three magistrates sitting on it was familiar with taking buses (they all had cars), a London Transport bus was hired for them to take a look at! How much better if they'd simply caught a bus along with ordinary mortals, preferably in the rush hour! It is important to encourage ordinary, unassuming people to apply to become magistrates -- but it is also vital for them to be given help in fitting in court sittings with their working routine. The question is -- how?

Answer 4

Magistrates ARE drawn from all walks of life. I know of three who often sit together, where one is a mother now with time on her hands, one is a local business man and the third is a self-employed painter & decorator. The main criterion, it seems, is that they are people who are able and willing to spend the time required, which doesn't apply to everybody.

Answer 5

So in effect you're saying abandon the rules of law and legal reasoning and make judgements based soley upon the basis of the value judgement and/or common sense of the judge?

Well, its a conflict which the judiciary has wrestled with since its inception.

BUT, it really doesnt work. "Common sense" varies from person to person, and therefore there would be no certainty of law. It would in fact lead to injustice as different judges would end up handing out different punishment for cases which comprise of exactly the same facts. In addittion, all of us would end up being paranoid about breaking the law, and living our lives in a constant state of worry that we might be nicked and subjected to the whims of whatever judge we got. This is because a common sense approach to judgement would not be able to create or sustain legal precedent, so evenually the law would become meaningless - open to endless intrepretation by those in aithority.

Answer 6

I say vote Republican when it comes to judges. I am a card carrying member of the Green Party (too liberal for the Dems), yet when it comes to law and order only a hardcore Republican has the guts to do the right thing in my opinion.

Answer 7

Many judges are judges because they couldn't steal enough money with their "license to steal" (law degree).