Lay Magistrate Essay

Use of Lay people in the English court of Law
By Atis Stafeckis

Lay magistrates are legally untrained and unpaid individuals who live locally to the magistrate court in the city they reside in . Lay Magistrates come from a range of occupational backgrounds, while some training is provided to magistrate upon appointment of their position , largely it is not considered to be a suitable amount. Lay magistrates are cost effective, and partake in cases such as speeding penalties, and other criminal cases. Although magistrates are unpaid, they're eligible to claim travel expenses and loss of earnings during their duty. To become a lay magistrate, one must be aged between 18 and 65. This isn't the only limitation as individuals who have been previously declared bankrupt, hold criminal convictions and are civil servants (military, police) are unable to be appointed as a Lay Magistrate by the Lord Chancellor.
The bench consists of 2-3 justices , as well as a Magistrates clerk whose job is to inform the bench of the appropriate legal procedures, legal practice and Law. Magistrate courts are widely known as 'police courts', this comes from criticism that justices tend to be easily persuaded by even the most implausible police evidence. Reasons such as having access to a list of the defendant’s previous offences; can easily persuade a magistrate to conclude a guilty verdict. This in-turn has become a concern to many individual's as to whether they're likely to have a fair trial. As approximately 80% of justices in the United Kingdom are above the age of 40, it can be argued that younger offenders are stereotyped and verdicts maybe passed with a lack of understanding of the offenders status within society, an example of this would be the o...

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...rs are dealt with for hundreds of years. This would allow one to assume that trial by jury, and trial by magistrate; are simply the most effective methods of dealing with offenders. Despite the negatives of using non-legally trained personnel within the legal system, there are many positives, an example of a positive is simply the random selection for jury service, this random selection effectively eliminates many discriminatory allegations such as stereotyping, racism, sexism, and others; made by a defendant (Ward, R and Akhtar, A . 2011).

Martin, J and Gibbins, M . (2010) AZ Handbook Law . 4 ed . Oxfordshire: Philip Allan Updates.
Ward, R and Akhtar, A . (2011) English Legal System . 11 ed . New York: Oxford University Press.
Websites used: http://www.inbrief.co.uk/legal-system/when-are-juries-used.htm [Accessed 13 October 2013] . Accessed: 13 October 2013 .