A Critical View of the Legal System of the United Kingdom - Case Study Example

The Legal System In order to ensure the success of any democracy in the modern world, proper functioning of three vital aspects is extremely essential namely legislature, executive and judiciary. While the work of forming new laws is bestowed upon the legislature or the elected representatives of the mass, the executives are in charge of proper enforcement of such laws. The role of judiciary is quite different from the other too and it is involved to oversee if everything is within the legal purview and if not it might ask the concerned parties to act in a particular way so that the legislation can be followed in the true and best spirit. The legal system comprises of the various concerned parties of the legal framework namely the court of laws, the lawyers, the plaintiffs, the official staffs of the court of law, the judges and also the society at large as often the judgment are held as records for future purposes and it becomes binding among the people. It was believed that the civil justice system in the United Kingdom was one of the best systems in the world. But like many other nations, any court case called for extensive use of scarce resources like time and money. In order to avoid those, a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Woolf came up with certain recommendations, popularly known as Woolf Reforms, which envisaged reducing the use of time and money in the legal system. This paper aims to provide a critical view of the legal system of United Kingdom especially of the civil justice system with respect to the Woolf Reforms. The United Kingdom comprises of three different jurisdictions namely England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, all with different court system and distinct court system. The civil justice procedure, for which Lord Woolf had elaborate recommendations commences with the County Courts at the bottom of the system. The High Courts of the United Kingdom are basically divided into three divisions like Queens Bench, Family and Chancery. High Courts act as the court of appeals for minor cases as well as court of first instance for major cases. One can appeal the cases also to Court of Appeal (Civil Division). In the United Kingdom, it is the House of Lords that act as the supreme court of appeal where the Law Lords or the thirteen judges designated for the appeal hear the cases. The other indispensable part of the legal framework also comprises of the civil court Judicial Committee of the Privy Council that looks after the matters of the civil justice that arises in the overseas territories of United Kingdom. In the year of 1996, Lord Woolf came up with a report of ‘Access to Justice’ that propagated community legal service and better use of legal aid. It took the form of act in the year of 1999 with the establishment of Legal Services Commission that aimed to modernize the entire legal framework of the United Kingdom as Lord Woolf observed that though previously, the use of resources like money and time were not issues of concern, but in the recent times they are and the legal system should provide for better and efficient use of such resources and think out of the box (Institute of Legal Executive, n.d.). Lord Woolf had remarkable observations regarding the civil justice system prevalent in the United Kingdom. In the year of 1996, he observed that the various elements of judiciary should be more careful with respect to the use of time and money in the civil procedure system. He identified that the there should be fixed timetables for the concerned parties so that particular and well defined steps are taken in any civil case which should to limit the expert evidence as well as disclosure (Keane, 2008). The other important observation of Lord Woolf had been that the judicial system should address the key issues in order to reduce the effect of money and time and should not concentrate on all the possible issues (Sime, 2008). The basic objective of the Woolf Reforms was to make the entire legal system (especially the civil procedure system) inexpensive as well as more accessible to the concerned parties primarily among the mass. In the words of Lord Woolf, the reforms aimed to attach the following attributes with the civil justice system “just, fair, cost, speed, understandable, responsive, certainty and effective” (Ministry of Justice, 2010). The reforms instigated by Lord Woolf aimed to make the process of civil litigation easy and accessible to the common mass with reducing the misuse of time and money. The reform suggested that the county courts should have the power to start any case of law other than defamation and all the cases should begin with a standard ‘claim form’. Lord Woolf opined that emphasis should be put to alternative and out of the court solutions and the court of law should keep provisions for those settlements as it would reduce the use of time and money. Also, another major recommendation of the Woolf Reforms was to have fixed time scale to manage a case of law and there should be co-operative litigation among the concerned parties. Also, cost estimates should be presented depending upon the approval of the judges. It can be said without doubt that the motive behind the reform were noble and need of the hour but the basic question lies if Woolf Reforms could attain success with respect of the working of the legal system (Sixth Form Law, 2008). Lord Woolf identified a list of principles in civil justice system which was required for ensuring justice. The provided statement about time and money is related to the thread of the report related to controlling of the cost of litigation. The statement describes about the importance of focusing on certain significant issues instead of all possible issue to control the cost of litigation. It also tells about limiting the quantity of work which has to be completed in a case. Lord Woolf’s reforms had an impact on costs as well as delay at pre-action stage. The post-action claims are closely monitored along with necessary penalties are imposed for any non-compliance. The solicitors are expected to ‘front-load’ their tasks to be prepared after a litigation has commenced. This required additional tasks which cost time and money (Fenn. & Et. Al., n.d.). In case of English courts, related procedures of civil litigation Lord Devlin around 25 years ago pointed out a fallacy of legal system concerning justice which stated that ‘time and money is no object’ in case of justice (Woolf, 1996). In the present scenario erosion of access to any justice is caused by features like front end related loading of the expenses related to litigation. Over involvement of the judges in any case generally increases the cost of litigation. In the civil justice system, due to the variable quality of personnel, the prospect of a better judgment taken by a judiciary instead of a lawyer becomes less. In the civil justice system, there is an early involvement of high amount of cost. Due to the procedural uncertainties there is a possibility of incurring further costs. Due to this reasons civil justice system has transpired beyond the resources of most of the member related to the public (West, 2009). Lord Woolf had observed the civil system to be crippled by excessive delays, high costs, and complexities in the trails process. These factors were endemic in the legal system (Gillespie, 2007). The Woolf Reforms and the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) have been a disaster to the civil justice system. Ordinary public have not been able to fully gain benefit from the reforms. The access to justice criteria and civil procedure rules has been a failure. The reforms and CPR has led to complete erosion in the process of gaining access to the justice. Many of the changes in CPR were cosmetic and unnecessary. In the present scenario, due to the over involvement of judges the cost of litigation increased. By using the CPR, the judges were thought to analyse a paper much better than the lawyers, but this scenario only helped to increase the cost of the litigation as the lawyers are more intimate to the case than the judges. Due to procedural uncertainty and early high involvement of costs, the civil justice system has gone beyond the reach of the majority of the public. Therefore, the reforms have made legal system more complex and costly but with excessive delays (West, 2009). Civil system was a slow and costly system. Lord Woolf decided to reform the existing system by providing certain reforms. A new Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) was prepared. The disadvantages of the system were that it was too adversarial and also very expensive, uncertain, and also there were appalling delays in the process of getting justice. Due to Woolf reforms the entire system became much more beneficial for the civil litigants. Advantages of the civil system are that a significant amount of cases are being settled before any issue. The cases that proceed and are contested in the court are conducted more swiftly from the issue to the end process of trial. Cases are not perked indefinitely and different cases gain appropriate share of the resources and also attention from the court. In the civil procedure availability of justice is a very important feature. In the civil system, the disputes are resolved economically and efficiently. The civil system chronically has been under resourced. Case management in civil system has resulted in front loading of costs. Due to this scenario many cases are being settled earlier. This scenario is also fully justified. In a civil system if a case settles at a stage after completion of a trial and long period in the court then there would be a greater expense incurred (Woolf, 2009). Civil justice system has three major issues that need to be reformed. These are time, cost and delay. Therefore, certain Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) has to come into the civil system. A reform can be done in the process of using mandatory level of mediation and also ADR methods, in which out of court settlements are achieved. A new reform could be used in case of the section which include ‘no genuine issue for trails’ with ‘no real prospect of successes. Trial schedules can be improved to permit a court to hold mini-trial. These reforms along with mutual agreement between the two parties can help to reduce the time, cost and delay related to a civil case (Civil Justice Reform Project, 2006). In the criminal prosecution process the offender is prosecuted for any offence against the society. The offender is punished through imprisonment and penalties. A criminal prosecution is different from civil case in the area of ‘burden of proof’. A crime has been committed has to be proved beyond any doubt in the criminal prosecution. The civil case relates to rights and also duties of an individual. Violation of rights known as torts are the main issue related to civil case. A victim can pursue a civil case if there is scenario in which the victim rights are being affected. The victim can bring in action against another person to gain restitution for the negligence that is caused against him. A victim can get compensation for damages and losses much easier and faster in civil cases and also can get payment from the defendant to compensate for the loss. Civil cases are judged ‘on the balance of probability’. Therefore, in a scenario when the victim is dependant more on probabilities to gain success, then the victim can look to go for civil cases rather than the criminal prosecution (Johnston, n.d.). The civil justice system is an important aspect in the legal system of a country. This system is used to provide justice to the victim in case of violation of their rights and also duties. Woolf reforms were brought into existence to amend certain drawbacks in the legal system like the three aspects related to litigation cases time, cost and delay. These reforms have not been entirely successful as in the present scenario there has been occurrence of delays and high cost in the civil cases. Therefore, it can be said that Woolf Reforms could not successfully achieve all its underlying objectives. References Civil Justice Reform Project, 2006. Civil Justice Reform Project Mandate. Consultation paper. [Online] Available at: http://www.civiljusticereform.jus.gov.on.ca/files/Consultation%20Paper%20%28August%2018,%202006%29.pdf [Accessed July 30, 2010]. Fenn, P. & Et. Al., No Date. The unintended consequences of reforming civil procedure: Evidence from the Woolf reforms in England and Wales. Ealeroma. [Online] Available at: http://www.eale09.eu/ocs2/index.php/EALE/roma09/paper/viewFile/348/154 [Accessed July 30, 2010]. Gillespie, A. The English legal system. Oxford University Press, 2007. Institute of Legal Executive, No Date. The UK Legal System. About Legal Executives. [Online] Available at: http://www.ilex.org.uk/about_legal_executives/the_uk_legal_system.aspx [Accessed July 30, 2010]. Johnston, J., No Date. Civil Law and Criminal Law. AIIRSM. 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Civil justice system: why we are doing well but can do better. Times Newspapers Ltd. [Online] Available at: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6465068.ece [Accessed July 30, 2010]. Read More