The Legal System of Wales – recent developments
In my book, Introduction to the English Legal System, I write that the book is “about the English legal system (which includes at least for the present the legal system in Wales)”.
However, devolution has led to a number of developments which need to be noted which point to the creation of a distinct system of government for Wales. In this context it is possible to see the outlines of a new Welsh Legal system beginning to emerge.
1 The National Assembly of Wales – executive and ‘legislature’
The first Government of Wales Act 1998 (GOWA 98) began a process of devolving powers to Wales. It created a new body, the National Assembly of Wales. Under GOWA 98 this body had executive functions in delivering policy and services in specific areas such as agriculture, culture, economic development, education, health, housing, local government, social services and planning. Henceforth, the National Assembly became responsible for carrying those out in respect of Wales.
At the same time. the National Assembly was given limited legislative powers including the making of regulations, rules and orders, and the giving of financial assistance. The National Assembly was also the body which held the Welsh Government to account.
This blending of executive functions and parliamentary functions proved to be very confusing.
In fact, soon after the National Assembly of Wales was established an informal division was created between the ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ (Ministers and civil servants predominantly based in Cathays Park, Cardiff and other offices across Wales) and the ‘National Assembly for Wales’ (Assembly Members and officials based in Cardiff Bay).
2 National Assembly and Welsh Government
The informal division between the legislative and executive branches of the Welsh Government was formally recognised in the Government of Wales Act 2006 (GOWA 2006).
This established a newly constituted National Assembly as the legislature. It also created a separate executive – initially called the ‘Welsh Assembly Government’, later amended to the ‘Welsh Government’. It was made accountable to the National Assembly.
GOWA 2006 gave the National Assembly power to pass its own primary legislation – initially called ‘Assembly Measures’, from 2011 called ‘Assembly Acts’. These Measures and Acts were limited to 21 areas of activity which were conferred on the National Assembly by the UK Parliament in Westminster. The Wales Act 2014 increased those power by giving the National Assembly limited taxation powers.
The Wales Act 2017 changed the system for determining the powers of the National Assembly from a ‘conferred powers’ model to a ‘reserved powers’ model. (This is consistent with the models adopted for Scotland and Northern Ireland.) In a reserved powers model, there is no specific list of devolved subjects. The model operates on the basis that everything is devolved unless it is reserved to the UK Parliament.
3. Senedd Cymru or the Welsh Parliament.
The increased importance of the Parliamentary function led politicians in Wales to argue that the name of the National Assembly should be altered to reflect more clearly its legislative function. After a period of consultation and legislation, the name of the National Assembly of Wales was changed, on 5 May 2020, to ‘Senedd Cymru or the Welsh Parliament’. With full law-making powers and the ability to vary taxes, the new name will reflect its constitutional status as a national parliament.
4. A Welsh Justice system
Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, governments comprise 3 separate branches: a legislature, an executive and a judiciary. For Wales, the first two of these are now in place. Currently, there is no clearly delineated Welsh Justice system. There are, however, moves to change the current position.
- Commission for Justice in Wales
The Welsh Government established a Commission for Justice in Wales in December 2017. It reported in 2019. It was chaired by Lord John Thomas, who had recently retired as the Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales.
Its report is a very wide-ranging one covering such issues as: legal aid and advice; new approaches to civil dispute resolution; new approaches to the sentencing and rehabilitation of offenders and the protection of victims of crime. I plan to summarise its principal recommendations in a separate blog item.
The work of the Commission for Justice has been complemented by a programme of social research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, on the development of Administrative Justice in Wales, which has produced reports on matters including housing and education.
- The Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee Consultation
Arising from the Commission’s report, the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee of Senedd Cymru ran, from March to June 2020, a consultation on Making Justice Work in Wales. Its terms of reference stated that its work should be in 2 parts: (i) fact-finding and looking forward; and (ii) analysis of how the justice system could operate more effectively in Wales
In Part 1, the Committee intends
- To identify and map the Senedd and Welsh Government’s existing responsibilities and functions relating to the scrutiny of justice matters;
- To identify and review the current funding arrangements for justice matters already within the responsibility of the Senedd and Welsh Government;
- To consider the existing operation of justice functions in Wales, including Welsh Government policies in devolved areas and their interaction with the administration of justice;
- To consider the impact of relationships between UK and Welsh competence on specific justice matters and to identify areas of concern;
- To consider how the Senedd could have a more proactive role in the scrutiny of justice, including how justice bodies could engage with the Senedd.
In Part 2, the Committee is asked:
- Using results of Part 1, to explore any areas of concern in the balance of justice powers and accordingly whether a more coherent and joined-up approach to justice policy could be achieved;
- To consider the implications, consequences and practicalities of any potential justice devolution;
- To learns lessons on the approach to scrutiny of justice from the UK and other legislatures.
The outcome of the inquiry has not yet been published.
Sources:
General information about the Welsh Government is at https://gov.wales/
Information about Senedd Cymru is at https://senedd.wales/en/Pages/Home.aspx
The Commission on Justice in Wales Report is at https://gov.wales/commission-justice-wales-report
The Nuffield Foundation sponsored programme on Administrative Justice in Wales is at https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/paths-to-administrative-justice-in-wales
Information about the Senedd Cymru Committee inquiry is at https://business.senedd.wales/mgConsultationDisplay.aspx?id=388&RPID=1017209288&cp=yes
Legal services regulation: the Mayson report
This is an important report on the need to rethink the approach to the regulation of legal services and those who provide them. The author Stephen Mayson has summarised his report on his blog. I reproduce what he wrote here, with his permission.
After two years, my final report of the Independent Review of Legal Services Regulation haas been published. It is available for download from this site and from UCL.
In 2016, the Competition & Markets Authority completed its market study and concluded that the legal services sector is not working well for individual consumers and small businesses, and that the current regulatory framework under the Legal Services Act 2007 is not sustainable in the long run. One of its recommendations was that the government should undertake a review of the current regulatory framework.
In light of Brexit, the Ministry understandably did not feel able at the time to commit to a formal review. In July 2018, I therefore volunteered to undertake the Independent Review on a pro bono basis under the auspices of the Centre for Ethics & Law, in the Faculty of Laws at University College London.
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Covid 19 and the English Legal System (5): Parliamentary inquiries (revised)
Those interested in how key actors in the legal world are trying to cope with the implications for the English Legal System of Covid-19 might care to follow the work – currently on-going – of two Parliamentary Select Committees.
The House of Commons Justice Committee launched an inquiry into Coronavirus (COVID-19) on 31 March 2020. It is examining the impact on prisons, the probation service and the court systems. They have held three evidence gathering sessions in which they heard from a number of key witnesses, including the Lord Chief Justice, the Minister of State, key officials from Prisons and Probation, the Chair of the Magistrates Association. It is likely that the Committee will publish a relatively short report in the course of the next few weeks.
At the same time on 13 May 2020, the House of Lords Constitution Committee opened an inquiry into the Constitutional implications of Covid 19. This will be a more wide-ranging inquiry than that being held by the Commons Justice Committee.
The announcement of the inquiry states:
The Covid-19 pandemic and the Government’s measures to respond to it have significant constitutional implications, as well as health, social and economic ones. These include:
- The ability of Parliament to hold the Government to account
- Scrutiny of emergency powers
- The operation of the courts
The Constitution Committee will consider these issues and other related matters as part of an umbrella inquiry into the constitutional implications of Covid-19. The Committee will initially explore questions such as:
- What can Parliament do to maximise its scrutiny of the emergency regulations and to hold the Government to account effectively during lockdown? How are adjustments to procedures and processes working in the House of Lords?
- What are the consequences for different ways of Parliament working on effectiveness, accessibility, fairness and transparency?
- What emergency powers has the Government sought during the pandemic and what powers has it used and how?
- What lessons are there for future uses of emergency powers, their safeguards and the processes for scrutinising them?
- How has the Government used both law and guidance to implement the lockdown and what have been the consequences of its approach? How has this varied across the constituent parts of the United Kingdom?
- What liberties has Parliament loaned the Government during lockdown? What are the processes for reviewing and returning them? Are the sunset provisions in the Acts and regulations sufficient?
- How is the court system operating during the pandemic? What has been the impact of virtual proceedings on access to justice, participation in proceedings, transparency and media reporting?
- How will the justice system manage the increasing backlog of criminal cases? Is it appropriate to rethink the jury system during the pandemic, and beyond, and if so how?
To date, the Committee has issued a call for evidence and has had a number of hearings at which oral evidence has been presented. Among the witnesses who have already given evidence is the ‘guru’ of the use of IT in the delivery of legal services, Prof Richard Susskind and the leading researcher on the justice system, Prof Dame Hazel Genn.
I suspect this report will take somewhat longer to appear than that of the Commons Committee.
In addition to these two inquiries which cover many aspects of the working of the legal and justice systems, in mid-May 2020, the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee also launched an inquiry: Responding to Covid-19 and the Coronavirus Act 2020. The aim of this inquiry is set out as follows:
The Coronavirus Act 2020 was emergency legislation passed by Parliament on 25 March, to provide the Government with the powers it wanted to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.
Under section 98 of the Act 2020, every six months there is “parliamentary review” which means that the Government must, so far as is practicable, make arrangements for the following motion to be debated and voted on: “That the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 should not yet expire.”
PACAC is launching an inquiry to scrutinise the constitutional and public administration aspects of the Act, with the goal of supporting and informing that debate.
It has issued a call for evidence but has not to date arranged for any meetings or hearings.
For links to all these inquiries see:
The Justice inquiry is at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/254/coronavirus-covid19-the-impact-on-prison-probation-and-court-systems/
The House of Lords Constitution Committee is at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/298/constitutional-implications-of-covid19/
The evidence of Profs Susskind and Genn is at https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/0f0810d1-9489-4506-9108-139f6d4f221e
The PACAC inquiry is at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/310/responding-to-covid19-and-the-coronavirus-act-2020/
All evidence sessions held by Parliamentary Committees can be accessed at https://parliamentlive.tv/Commons.
Covid 19 and the English Legal System (4): Trial by Jury
One of the most serious consequences of Covid 19 has been a huge increase in the backlog of cases awaiting a trial in the criminal courts. Although only a tiny minority of criminal cases are the subject of trial by a jury, by definition they are the most high profile and serious cases.
It is often stated that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. The authorities responsible for the criminal justice system cannot therefore simply sit on their hands and wait for Covid 19 to disappear. The challenge is to know what practical steps can be taken to ensure that criminal trials do not come to a complete standstill.
At present, the principal response has been for the HM Courts and Tribunals Service to reconfigure existing court buildings to enable trials before a jury to take place in a socially distanced way.
An article in The Times of 4 June 2020 tells how one such trial – in Bristol Crown Court – actually went very well. But, as the author barrister Dominic Thomas points out, the trial required the use of the entire court building – in which 6 trials would normally be going on at the same time. Socially distanced hearings organised on this basis will therefore not make a significant dent in the backlog.
Two alternative ideas have recently been aired. First, also in the Times (May 1 2020), the former High Court judge, Sir Richard Henriques, floated the idea that, at least while the Covid 19 pandemic remains an active threat to public health, criminal cases should be dealt with by trial judges sitting alone. In other words, the use of the jury would be suspended.
This idea might seem to strike at the heart of a key feature of the English Legal System. But it received some heavyweight support (see also Letters to the Editor of the Times on the following day).
In fact, it is not as shocking an idea as might at first appear. It has long been argued by some commentators and practitioners that use of the jury is not suited to particular types of trial – complex and lengthy fraud trials are usually cited as the prime candidate for trials with a judge and assessors in place of the jury.
And it should not be forgotten that there is already power, in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 Part 7, to dispense with the jury in cases where there is a real and present danger of jury tampering – a power that has hardly ever been used but is nonetheless on the statute book.
Shortly before his death in 2018, the campaigning advocate Sir Louis Blom-Cooper completed an important study of the criminal trial system, which among other things shows how, in continental Europe, jury trial was – over the years – replaced by a system of judges sitting with lay assessors.
I share the view that a judge sitting alone would not be the fairest mode of deciding serious criminal cases. The idea of trial judges sitting with, say, two assessors who could help to determine the facts in the light of the evidence presented, seems to me worth pursuing.
An alternative proposal is that jury trials should be retained, but that the trial proceedings should be conducted virtually, with jurors viewing proceedings on computer screens. JUSTICE, the human rights group, is in the process of holding a number of pilot hearings. The first two have been the subject of some independent assessment. The third can be viewed online.
My guess is that as we will be living with the effect of Covid 19 for some time to come, changes will have to be made to the ways in which major criminal trials are conducted.
See: article by Dominic Thomas https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2020-06-04/law/socially-distanced-courts-wont-dent-the-case-backlog-fwgt5p35d
Article by Sir Richard Henriques https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jury-trials-could-restart-next-month-as-court-backlogs-grows-says-robert-buckland-rtjq3xpd5
Letters in response: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/times-letters-trials-without-juries-would-ease-the-backlog-cdb8bnmwh
Louis Blom-Cooper, Unreasoned Verdict: The Jury’s Out https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/unreasoned-verdict-9781509915224/
JUSTICE, Piloting virtual jury trials, see https://justice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/JUSTICE-mock-virtual-trial-press-release.pdf
Evaluation by Prof Linda Mulcahy and Dr Emma Rowden at https://justice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Mulcahy-Rowden-Virtual-trials-final.pdf
Extract from the 3rd pilot hearing is at https://www.avmi.com/news-and-resources/avmi-develop-and-pilot-first-ever-virtual-mock-jury-trial-service-with-justice/
Covid-19 and the English Legal System (3): the experience of Judicial Review
As one of a series of items on the impact of the pandemic on the English Legal System, I am reblogging this interesting study of how Judicial Review cases are being dealt with online
Judicial review during the Covid-19 pandemic (Part I)
By Joe Tomlinson (University of York), Jack Maxwell (Public Law Project), Jo Hynes (University of Exeter), and Emma Marshall (University of Exeter).
This piece originally appeared on the Admin Law Blog on 26 May 2020 and can be found here. It is reposted with permission and thanks.
The COVID-19 pandemic raises at least two important questions for judicial review in England and Wales. The first is about process: how is judicial review operating in a time of social distancing, when most court processes have quickly shifted to a remote format? A second, related question is about litigation patterns: how are people using judicial review to challenge the Government’s response to COVID-19 itself?
In this two-part post, we offer some tentative answers to these questions. This first part examines how the Administrative Court’s amended judicial review procedure has been working in practice…
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Domestic Abuse Bill 2020
The problem of domestic abuse has slowly risen up the political agenda over the past few years. For far too long regarded it was regarded as essentially a private matter in which public authorities, in particular the police, were often reluctant to act. However, the indefatigable work of charitable organisations, such as Refuge, have done much to change the minds of policymakers. And it was an issue which the former Prime Minister Theresa May took particularly seriously.
Over the last 2 and a half years, there have been a series of steps leading to reform of the law.
1. A Consultation Paper, setting out proposed changes to the law, was published in March 2018. This identified 4 objectives for change:
- promoting awareness – to raise public and professional awareness
- protection and support – to enhance the safety of victims and the support that they receive
- transforming the justice process – to prioritise victim safety in the criminal and family courts, and review the perpetrator journey from identification to rehabilitation
- improving performance – to drive consistency and better performance in the response to domestic abuse across all local areas, agencies and sectors.
2. The consultation was followed by a draft Domestic Abuse Bill in March 2019 which was considered by a Joint Committee of the House of Commons and House of Lords. It set out the following issues which required legislative change. They are:
- creation of a statutory definition of domestic abuse;
- establishment of the office of Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and setting out the commissioner’s functions and powers;
- providing for a new Domestic Abuse Protection Notice and Domestic Abuse Protection Order;
- prohibiting perpetrators of domestic and other forms of abuse from cross-examining their victims in person in the family courts (and preventing victims from having to cross-examine their abusers) and giving the court discretion to prevent cross-examination in person where it would diminish the quality of the witness’s evidence or cause the witness significant distress;
- creating a statutory presumption that complainants of an offence involving behaviour that amounts to domestic abuse are eligible for special measures in the criminal courts;
- enabling high-risk domestic abuse offenders to be subject to polygraph testing as a condition of their licence following their release from custody;
- placing the guidance supporting the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme on a statutory footing;
- ensuring that, where a local authority, for reasons connected with domestic abuse, grants a new secure tenancy to a social tenant who had or has a secure lifetime or assured tenancy (other than an assured shorthold tenancy), this must be a secure lifetime tenancy;
- extending the extra-territorial jurisdiction of the criminal courts in England and Wales to further violent and sexual offences.
3. The consultation on the Draft Bill was concluded in July 2019, and a Domestic Abuse Bill was introduced into Parliament on the same day. However, it fell when the December 2019 General Election was called.
4. In March 2020, a revised Domestic Abuse Bill was published which is now proceeding through Parliament. It is largely the same as the 2019 Bill though a number of proposed clauses have been strengthened. For example, the powers of the Courts to protect victims from being cross-examined by abusers have been enlarged.
The timetable for the Bill provides that it should have passed through the Commons by the end of June 2020. It is likely to have passed the Lords and be given Royal Assent sometime in the Autumn of 2020.
Although I have not linked this initiative directly to Covid 19, as I have done in a number of other blog items, there is a clear link between the two since one of the well-publicised consequences of the Covid-19 lockdown has been a sharp increase in the numbers of people seeking help to protect them from domestic abuse.
I will update the blog on this issue after the Bill becomes law.
For the work of Refuge, see https://www.refuge.org.uk/
A press release relating to the 2020 Bill is at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/domestic-abuse-bill
Further documents relating to the Bill are at https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2019-21/domesticabuse.html
Covid 19 and the English Legal System (2) Virtual hearings and on-line courts
Almost exactly a year ago (May 2 2019) I noted in this blog the introduction of the Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill. This was to be an important staging post in the process of reforming Courts and Tribunals, to enable more hearings and other proceedings to be on-line. The Bill would have provided for the creation of a new Procedure Committee to deal with how such hearings and other proceedings should take place. The Bill fell when the General Election held 2019 was announced.
Nevertheless, far from derailing the Government’s reform plans, the Covid 19 pandemic has done more to speed up progress towards the development of new online courts than might have been imagined. Although the Online Procedure Bill has not, to date, been introduced, the Coronavirus Act 2020 has effectively stepped in. For as long as the Act is in force (the legislation is time-limited to 2 years), it provides for the transformation of ways in which courts and tribunals are to be run. It does this by disapplying or amending existing legislation regulating a large number of aspects of public policy.
Sections 53 to 57 and Schedules 23 – 27 of the Coronavirus Act deal with the use of video and audio technology in Courts and Tribunals. I do not propose to go through these provisions in detail. But it worth setting out the policy objectives of these provisions. I have adapted these from the Explanatory Notes to the Act:
1. [Although] the courts currently have various statutory and inherent powers which enable them to make use of technology, the Act amends existing legislation so as to enable the use of technology either in video/audio-enabled hearings in which one or more participants appear before the court using a live video or audio link, or by a wholly video/audio hearing where there is no physical courtroom and all participants take part in the hearing using telephone or video conferencing facilities.
2. Provisions are also made within the Act to enable the public to see and hear proceedings which are held fully by video link or fully by audio link. This enables criminal, family and civil courts and tribunals to make directions to live stream a hearing which is taking place in this manner.
3. There are existing restrictions on photography and sound recording in physical courts. (Section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 provides prohibitions on photography in courts. The Contempt of Court Act 1981 prohibits the making of unauthorised sound recordings.) These offences were created to protect participants in court proceedings, but long before the concept of a virtual hearing was thought possible. Provisions in the Act therefore create similar offences to protect participants and prohibit recording or transmitting live-streamed proceedings, photography and sound recordings in the context of virtual hearings and live-links.
4. The Act provides for restrictions to be imposed on individuals who are potentially infectious and that the decision to impose such restrictions can be appealed to magistrates’ court. The Act therefore ensures that such hearings should be conducted fully by video link, unless the court directs otherwise, given the person appealing the decision would be subject to restrictions, and there is the risk of passing on the infection if they were to travel to court.
Although these specific provisions will, I hope, have a limited shelf life, they are having the effect that, like it or not, judges, legal practitioners and other court and tribunal users are being forced to use these new technologies.
There have been sporadic reports in the professional legal press and elsewhere that, actually, many really like the new ways of doing business and are surprised how well they work. Others, particularly where the technology does not work as it should, are less enthusiastic.
But the champions of reform among the judiciary and policymakers clearly see these currently emergency procedures as a really valuable practical testbed and the precursor to significantly more substantial reform in the years ahead.
The Act can be found at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/7/contents/enacted
A useful report on these matters from Susan Acland-Hood, who is leading the Courts and Tribunals reform programme, was published on 30 April 2020 and is available at https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/30/using-remote-hearings-to-maintain-justice-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
See international developments at the website: https://remotecourts.org/
Reforming divorce law
The current law provides that divorce can only be initiated by one party to the marriage (the “petitioner”). The other party (the “respondent”) must then acknowledge that they have received (been “served with”) the petition and state whether they disagree with the divorce and intend to contest (“defend”) it. Only around 2% of respondents indicate an intention to contest, and only a handful of such cases progress to a final court hearing in front of a judge.
The law requires a person seeking a divorce to satisfy the court that the legal test of irretrievable breakdown has been met. This is done by citing in the divorce petition one or more of five “facts”. Three facts are based on conduct (adultery, behaviour – commonly referred to as “unreasonable behaviour” – and desertion). Two facts are based on a period of separation prior to filing the petition for divorce (two years if both parties consent to the divorce, or five years otherwise). If one of the five facts is made out, the court must grant the decree of divorce.
A similar regime exists for those couples who have entered a Civil Partnership.
It has long been argued that the need to ‘prove’ irretrievable breakdown in this way too often leads to unnecessary conflict between separating partners, which in turn too often has very harmful impacts on the children of the relationship. It has been argued for many years that – particularly where irretrievable breakdown is proved by conduct – the current law in effect requires one party to blame the other party for the breakdown. In reality, relationships break down because neither party is able to sustain the relationship. Changing the law is, however, politically difficult because many members of the public regard marriage as a permanent arrangement, at least until ‘death do them part’, so that, for those people, it should not be too easy to obtain a divorce.
After many years of campaigning, in 2018 the Government launched a Consultation paper on possible changes to the law on divorce. (Noted in this blog on October 2, 2018). The results of the consultation and a statement of the then Government’s policy for reform were published in April 2019 (Noted in this blog on May 1, 2019). It was said at the time that a Bill would be brought foreward “when Parliamentary time permits”.
This can often be used to delay progress with a measure that might be seem to be politically diffcult. In fact, the present Government – despite all the attention it was initially giving to Brexit, and all the attention it is now givng to dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic – published, in January 2020, the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill. The Bill started in the House of Lords, where it has completed all its stages. It is now waiting to be debated by the House of Commons.
The key features of the Bill are that:
- The requirement to provide evidence of conduct or separation facts is replaced with a new requirement simply to provide a statement of irretrievable breakdown.
- The possibility of contesting the decision to divorce is removed, as the statement of irretrievable breakdown is to be taken as conclusive evidence that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. (Divorce proceedings will still be able to be challenged for other reasons including jurisdiction, validity of the marriage, fraud and procedural compliance.)
- There will be a minimum overall timeframe of six months (26 weeks) for the divorce process, made up of a period of twenty weeks between the start of proceedings and when the application can be progressed to conditional order (there is currently no minimum period between these stages), and six weeks between the grant of a conditional order and when the order can be made final.
- The Lord Chancellor will have power by order to adjust the initial 20 week time period, subject to the proviso that the total period may not exceed 26 weeks (six months).
- There will be a new option of a joint application for cases where the decision to divorce is a mutual one, in addition to retaining the current ability of one party to initiate the legal process of divorce.
- The legal language will be updated. For example, for example the “decree nisi”, “decree absolute” and “petitioner” become the “conditional order”, “final order” and “applicant”.
For further details see https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2019-21/divorcedissolutionandseparation.html.
Also https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/divorce-dissolution-and-separation-bill
Covid 19 and the English Legal system (1)
Media attention has inevitably and properly been focused on the impact of Covid 19 on our health and care systems and how they are coping with the virus. Away from the headlines (most of the time at any rate), the Legal System has also been subject to the disruptive consequences of the pandemic. No part of the legal system has been untouched. Just take a look at today’s Ministry of Justice website. The impact is obvious. Prisons, courts, tribunals, legal advice services – all are mentioned in separate news items listed on the website.
The professional press has also been describing how law firms, barristers chambers, and other legal advisers are all offering their services online, through emails, video conferencing, the phone. Homeworking has become the norm, rather than large numbers of people commuting to work in large office blocks.
I am sure that there are many who want the virus to be controlled so that ‘normal’ – i.e. pre-Covid 19 life – can be resumed. My question is: Should ‘normal’ (legal) life be resumed? Should we not see the arrival of Covid 19 as a tremendous opportunity to change the ways in which legal services are delivered? Might this not lead to significant improvements in the ways in which legal services of all kinds are delivered to the public?
I guess that many in the professions have from time to time asked themselves how they might change the ways in which they work. There have been numerous discussions and conferences about how IT or AI or other innovations will transform legal practice. But the dreams of the visionaries, such as Richard Susskind, often seem to get lost in practice. People are just too busy to make radical changes to their working routines.
Covid 19 has altered all that. It has forced many to practice from home; it has forced many court processes to be delivered online. It has enabled those who work in any different corners of the legal system to discover that much if not all of their work can be done away from historic office/chambers settings. Of course, even before the arrival of Covid 19, experiments in new ways of working were taking place. But Covid 19 has created a momentum for change that I hope will ensure that the ‘old normal’ will not be resumed but will be replaced by a much more responsive and flexible ‘new normal’.
See https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice
See also Richard Susskind, Online Courts and the Future of Justice. Details at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/online-courts-and-the-future-of-justice-9780198838364?cc=gb&lang=en&
Back on line!
Dear Readers and Followers, You will be aware that I have taken a rather extended period of furlough (as it is now called!). But I am writing to say that I am now back and will be resuming my regular blog items on the English Legal System.
For an announcement relating to the next edition of my book Introduction to the English Legal System please click on the link on the sidebar to this page, just below my author pic.
Comments always welcome
Martin Partington: Introduction to the English Legal System 15th ed 2021
Oxford University Press Learning Link Resources
Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System 