Judicial System of England and Wales - Essay Example

The constitutional law of UK consists of statute law and case law where court of judges apply judicial precedent by interpreting the statute.(www.ilex.org) The judicial system of England and Wales comprises only of 24.9% and 6.9% are from the minority ethnic groups. It is also reported that 15.8% of judges are women whereas 3.4% are from ethnic minorities group. (Adrian Jack, 2004) According to the data retrieved from General Bar Council for the year 2008, it is reported that there were 3772 female barristers out of 12,136 self employed bar comprising 31.

1% of the total employment. Among women barristers, White Britons, Irish and other white people accounted to 2750 while there were 108 from Indian origin, 63 from Caribbean, 44 of Pakistan, 43 of African origin and remaining others were from other Asian countries. Black Minority Ethnic in the self employment category comprised of 10.6%.(The Bar Council) According to same source, it is known that 89% of the self employed barristers were white whereas 11% constituted the BME group which included 14% women barrister.

Under the employed barrister council, 85% of the employees were white in respect of 15% of BME group. Totally there were 46% of women in employed barrister category whereas BME women constituted only 19% and men 12%. And according to the statistics published in Judiciary of England and Wales, it is reported that there are 3820 magistrates out of which 727 were women accounting to only 19.03% and 156 were from ethnic minority groups which constituted for another 4.08%. Ethnic minorities were largely found in Deputy District Judges (MC) with 12 magistrates out of 167 wherein women were 40 only. (www.judiciary.gov.uk) It is also revealed from the reports that out of total 3820 posts, 2970 were occupied by Whites out of which only 525 were occupied by women.

In regard to ethnic minority groups, out of 156 posts occupied, 51 were women and 105 were men which can further clarified as 3% ethnics in males and 7% in females, overall constituting only 4% which is very low. (www.judiciary.gov.uk) The data published in the Judicial and Courts Statistics 2007 shows that the Justices of Peace (JPs) in UK in 1990 was 28,667 out of which 16,090 were men and 12,577 were women which increased to 29,419 in the year 2008 comprising of 14, 672 males and 14,747 female JPs.

The data further shows that the appointment of women in the JPs has been significantly more than men from 1990 itself which stood at 1063 as compared to 996 for men out of 2059 appointments. The present data of 2008 stands at 1899 appointments overall out of which 972 women were appointed and the remaining were men. The statistics does not reveal the number of ethnic minorities appointed during this period.( Judicial and Court Statistics 2007) Out of total magistrates in post, 92.7% were Whites whereas Black and Asian constituted only 3.8% and 2.4% respectively. (www.judiciary.gov.uk) The above data speaks volume about the gender discrimination as well as racial discrimination if not taken into consideration the data of Ministry of Justice in regard to appointment of JPs.

Need for certain changes - Judicial System Adrian Jack