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[MUSIC]. Okay, so I want to talk about two main
themes. First of all, I want to examine the
hierarchy of the courts with relation to the kind of work that each court does.
Now, I want to make a distinction. Between trial courts and appellate courts
as well. The second main theme that I want to look
at in relation to the hierarchy of the courts is the centrality of the hierarchy
to the doctrine of precedent. Now let me say first of all also by means
of an introduction to these themes that they are quite complicated.
There's also detail here. And I think this is one of the problems
that you'll always come across in trying to talk about the English legal system or
the legal system of England and Whales. It's difficult to know quite where to
start, because everything is interrelated.
So if I have to make some slight digressions to explain some of the terms
as we go along. I think that might be a good way forward
in terms of helping us to understand both these keys things about the hierarchy of
the courts. And also the connections between many of
the ideas I'm going to be talking about and some of the broader themes that run
through the subject as well. Okay.
So the first thing I want to talk about relates to the kind of work that the
courts do. And also to an important distinction
between the appellate courts, the courts that hear appeals, and the trial courts,
the courts of first instance if you like. Now, this is quite a complex distinction,
I'm going to return to it in a moment. And I think it's also fair to say because
I don't want to mislead you. That, what we're actually talking about
when we talk about the work of the course, is not necessarily about high
rock of the relationship. What it's really about is the division of
labor. In other words, a division of labor
between the civil courts and the criminal courts.
I think it's fair to say that this division of labor is justified by kind of
specilization. In other words, it streamlines, it makes
the System in in the legal system operate better if civil courts deal primarily
with civil matters and criminal courts deal primarily with criminal matters.
Now, once again, I have to almost pause and add another point in here.
What we'll find when we look at these themes in detail in a moment is that none
of these distinctions are hard and fast. In other words, what we will find when we
look at the various courts is that courts can have both appellate and a trial
jurisdiction. And also, a civil and a criminal
jurisdiction, which obviously is a little bit confusing.
I'm sorry about that, it's just the way things are.
I think if you sat down and tried to define or create a system of courts.
from logical first principles you probably wouldn't end up with the system
of courts that we have in the United Kingdom.
This is in part I think, it reflects the history.
It reflects the fact that institutions of common law are historical.
They change over time and change is often quite massive.
So, this doesn't make for ease of explanation but I'm hoping that as we
move forward we can make these fundamental divisions.
We can understand what these calls are doing and we will see a pattern emerging,
right. So I want to return to my first point
which is, I suppose that the point I advertise about the division of labor.
The distinction between the civil courts and the criminal courts, and let me just
stress. What I'm talking about here is not
strictly one of hierarchy. I'm going to get to that point in a
moment. I'm going to make reference to some,
descriptions of the courts which I'll read out and then comment on any of the
terms and show how all this material fits together.
So I'm thinking first of all about civil courts and I'm thinking about
dinstinction between civil courts and criminal courts.
So civil court cases arise when an individual or a business believes their
rights have been infringed. Civil justice in England and Wales is
mainly dealt with in county courts and in the case of more substainal complex cases
the high court. The jurisdiction.
This is a technical word which relates to the kind of case that a court can hear.
Jurisdiction then of the civil courts covers a very wide range from quite small
or simple claims for example damage goods or recovery of debt to large claims
between multinational corporations. Civil cases involve hearings in open
court which the public may attend, hearings in the judge's private rooms
from which the public are excluded, and matters decided by the judge in private
along the basis of papers alone. In other words, without representation
being made orally by lawyers or representatives.
Courts in the civil jurisdiction don't have the power to imprison a losing
power. Ordinarily but not always, they award
financial damages to the successful party.
The size of which depends on the circumstances of the claim.
Okay, so that's an overview of the civil courts, primarily the county court and
the high court. I'm going to come back to both of these
courts in a moment and go into more detail, but there's also a point here
that I think is important and much like [UNKNOWN] I think he'll be talking about
this idea. And this is the idea that the litigation,
the matters that courts deal with is structured in a particular way.
that's true of civil courts and it's true of criminal courts.
The theme I want to return to because what I want to.
Talk about, for the moment is criminal courts and criminal cases so we can get
our heads ahead this basic [UNKNOWN] between the kind of work civil courts do
and the kind of work criminal courts do. So here's a statement about criminal
courts. Criminal cases come to court after a
decision has been made, usually by the Crown Prosecution Service To prosecute
somebody for an alleged crime. And the vast majority of the cases,
magistrates in the magistrate courts hear the evidence and as a panel make a
decision on guilt or innocence. For more serious cases, district judge in
the magistrate court or circuit judge in the crime court will hear evidence.
In the case of the latter, this will involve a jury trial.
Very serious criminal cases, such as *** or ***, may be heard by a high
court judge in the high court. Okay.
Let me just remind you of what we're thinking about here.
We're concerned with this fundamental distinction between civil and criminal
courts. And this obviously maps onto the
distinction between civil and criminal law, and I'm hoping that we've got some
basic ideas that allow us to understand this basic demarkation.
What I want to do now is return to these themes in detail and explain that point I
made a little bit earlier on and that point is the complex one.
The fact that although we're making a distinction between civil and criminal
courts, we have to observe in detail that certain civil courts have jurisdiction
over certain criminal cases and vice versa.
We also need to study the fact that in relation to trial courts and appellate
courts, in other words, courts that are trying cases and courts that are hearing
appeals. The picture is also somewhat muddy,
logical but muddy, to the extent that the courts that we're looking at have both a
trial jurisdiction. in other words they try cases and an
appellate jurisdiction, in other words, they hear appeals on cases.
And with this basic toolkit of ideas that I want to look in more detail at the
machinery of both the civil the criminal courts.
[MUSIC].