Reviewed by: David Pickup
Author: Edited by David Faulkner
Publisher: Waterside Press Ltd
ISBN: 978-1904380863
Price: £14.95

When you are next sitting in a magistrates' court waiting for your client to arrive, you might wonder why he was arrested in his hometown but that court does not hold custody cases - so you have to travel to the south of the county for his remand and if there is a trial it will be at the other end of the county. You might also reflect that as magistrates are now 651 years old, having had their 650th birthday last year, whether the system provides local justice. Justices of the peace were set up by an act dating back to Edward III. The legislation is only a short paragraph of some eight lines; draftsmen knew how to be succinct then. Justices were to appointed to make sure people were not troubled by rioters or rebels, nor the peace blemished. Justices were appointed from the worthy of the county with some learned in the law or 'sage de la ley' as the Norman French has it.

There are not many law books you can get for under £100 let alone under £15. This is a collection of essays marking or celebrating the 650th milestone. The essays are all short and easily digestible. They vary from academic to practical. It may be that many lawyers would not want to celebrate any such birthday as our attitude to lay justices is mixed. What we want is efficient local courts dealing with cases fairly. What we are getting now is local courts being closed and an increase in paid professional magistrates sage de la ley. (Perhaps you could drop that expression into your next bail application before the stip. He or she might be impressed.) At the other end of the scale police can impose fixed penalties. Fewer people are being charged and those who are have to travel miles for their cases.

The thesis behind this book is that the lay justices are threatened as never before by governments that would like to replace them with professional judges. However magistrates have shown they are capable of being adaptable and accepting demanding training and moving away from benches of white, middle-class men to something resembling the society they come from. The response to last years’ riots showed that justice could be dispensed with quickly (thanks in no small part to the defence and prosecuting lawyers). No doubt the lawyers of Edward III’s time would be proud that we are still dealing with riots 650 years later.

The book contains the suggestion that lay and professional magistrates should sit together, although where that leaves the clerk is unclear. Perhaps lay magistrates should be paid at least their loss of wages. There are interesting suggestions on how magistrates could be used to supervise sentencing schemes much more and refers to the traditional role of magistrates as prison visitors. A note of criticism is that all the essays are arguing from a similar point of view. Essays from dissenting voices might have enlivened this discussion as would more information on the systems adopted by other common law countries. Have other countries retained lay magistrates? How have they fared?

For us lawyers there are wider questions about the future of judges and criminal justice. I suspect if lay magistrates go then juries will follow. We need to ask questions about whether these court closures really are saving money. Justice is expensive, inconvenient and time-consuming. Justice is not obtained on the cheap. Long may it be so.

David Pickup is a partner in Aylesbury-based Pickup & Scott

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