Britain’s plan to curb jury trials is a sharp break with tradition

Walk around the Old Bailey, Britain’s most famous criminal court, and you will find a marble plaque. It commemorates a trial from 1670, when a jury refused to convict two Quakers of unlawful assembly, despite pressure from a judge and being locked up without food or water. Their stubbornness helped establish, the plaque says, “the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions”.

Juries hold a cherished place in the British imagination. Magna Carta—Britain’s foundational constitutional document, issued in 1215—says no man should be imprisoned except by “the lawful judgment of his equals, or by the law of the land”. Sir William Blackstone, an 18th-century judge, called juries “the principal bulwark of our liberties”. More recently the emphasis tends to be on civic virtue: juries tie the public into the justice system and give legitimacy to courtroom verdicts.

But now the government plans to curtail jury trials, in a bid to tackle the vast backlog of cases in the criminal courts. David Lammy, the justice secretary, at first suggested abolishing them for virtually all crimes other than rape, manslaughter and murder. The official proposals, announced on December 2nd, are less radical but still striking. Only defendants charged with the most serious crimes, or facing three or more years in prison, will be entitled to a jury; all others will be dealt with by magistrates or a single judge. The plans are based on recommendations by Sir Brian Leveson. The main opposition parties have condemned them.

They are a response to a desperate situation. The backlog stands at nearly 80,000 cases, and is predicted to reach 105,000 by 2029. Victims and defendants can wait as long as four years for a trial, by which point evidence may have deteriorated and witnesses dropped out.

Juries are not the main cause (delays have spiralled due to disruption during covid-19, chronic underfunding and poor court productivity). But they don’t help. Jury selection and deliberation take time. Sometimes jurors get sick; occasionally they misbehave and cause trials to collapse. The government reckons judges are around 20% faster. Under its plans half of current jury trials—or 7,500 cases a year—would be heard by magistrates or a judge.

Many jurisdictions, such as Germany and the Netherlands, do not have juries and are not obviously less just. In rankings by the World Justice Project, which scores countries on their adherence to the rule of law, both outperform Britain. In Britain itself just 3% of criminal cases are heard by juries today. Before the first world war Britain had juries in the civil courts. Today no one is campaigning to reinstate them.

Still, Labour’s plans represent a sharp break with tradition—and in some specifics, with international norms. Giving lone judges the power to send someone to prison for three years is unusual. Judges can be biased or make mistakes, which is why they often sit in panels. In Germany single judges can hand out sentences of up to two years; in the Netherlands, one year.

The reforms were not in Labour’s manifesto. The government may struggle to convince Parliament when it introduces the legislation in the new year. The House of Lords is likely to push back. Labour might need to consider swapping lone judges with a judge flanked by two magistrates—as Sir Brian has proposed.

That action is needed is not in doubt. YouGov, a pollster, found slim support for Labour’s original, more radical scheme to abolish most juries: 41% backed it, with 36% against. That surely reflects a desire for politicians to tackle the problem. The true affront to Britons’ rights would be to allow the courts crisis to get even worse. ■