Too busy to read?

few of us devote much, if any, time to thinking critically about our criminal justice system; to considering how and why we have this particular way of doing justice, or reflecting on the impact it has upon the hundreds of thousands of people - defendants, witnesses and victims - who pass through the system every year. Not in the way that most of us form and gladly share opinions on the way we administer or fund healthcare, say, or the merits or demerits of types of schools. And this I find odd; because criminal justice affects us all.

Today, barristers automatically enjoy full 'rights of audience', which permit us to appear in any court in the land, from magistrates' courts through to the United Kingdom Supreme Court. By contrast, solicitors are only permitted to appear in the 'inferior courts', as they are (supposedly non-pejoratively) called - magistrates' and county courts - unless they undertake specialist courses and qualify as 'solicitor-advocates'.

Out of the 15,000 barristers in England and Wales, around 4,000 of us are criminal practitioners, assuming one of these diametric roles in Crown Court (and occasionally magistrates' court) cases across the country. Most of us are self-employed; hired guns, ethically obliged by the 'cab rank rule' to take the first case that comes calling to our clerks, regardless of its merit or our personal feelings about the parties or principles involved. And in crime, this means that most barristers both prosecute and defend (although not, obviously, in the same case). And my view has always been that doing a bit of both is good for the soul. It reinforces your independence. It sharpens your objectivity. And it helps you, in any given case, to know your enemy.

Henry II sought to introduce a 'common law' applicable nationwide, by establishing a cadre of judges who roamed the circuits, sitting in pop-up courts ('assizes') and applying the new common law. A key feature of the so-called 'common law tradition' is that where legislation has gaps or ambiguities, or calls for clarifying interpretation by judges hearing cases, the rulings of the most senior courts (today the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court) have the force of binding law, and must be followed by lower courts. This means that if you want to know the law on a given topic, the statute alone only tells you half the story; you will need to know what gloss has been slapped over it by court precedents.

criminal offences are divided into three categories. The least serious 'summary only' offences - motoring offences, common assault, minor public disorder - can only5 be tried in the magistrates' court. The most serious 'indictable only' offences - murder, rape, possessing firearms, serious violence and so forth6 - can only be tried in the Crown Court. The meaty filling of 'triable either way' crimes in between those two extremes - your burglaries, drug transactions, semi-serious violence and garden-variety sexual offending - can be heard either in the magistrates' court or the Crown Court, and the first appearance is used to determine which venue is most suitable (the 'allocation' procedure).

There are now around seventy Crown Courts nationwide, the most famous of which sits at the Central Criminal Court in London - the Old Bailey.

magistrates' court or a Crown Court.

The truth is that the entire case in favour of magistrates' courts, as we currently run them, is a sham. There is little sustainable rationale for their existence in principle, and no justification whatsoever for the way in which these courts operate in practice. There is no excuse for the amateur, sausage-factory paradigm of justice and 'that'll do' complacency that pervades 94 per cent of criminal cases, other than that most cynical political trinity: it's cheap, it's the way we've always done it and no one who votes either knows or cares.

The term 'Circuit Judge' refers to the six legal circuits or regions into which England and Wales have been traditionally divided - Northern, North-Eastern, Western, Midlands, South-Eastern, and Wales and Chester.