site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   770 thread views

Transnational Thursday for November 27, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

BBC: [UK] justice secretary wants [English and Welsh] jury trials scrapped except in most serious cases

The plans, obtained by BBC News, show that [Justice Secretary David] Lammy, who is also deputy prime minister, wants to ask Parliament to end jury trials for defendants who would be jailed for up to five years.

The proposals are an attempt to end unprecedented delays and backlogs in courts, and do not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

The MoJ presentation, produced earlier this month, says Crown Courts are facing record backlogs, with more than 78,000 cases waiting to be completed.

In practice, this means that suspects being charged with serious crimes today may not have a trial until late 2029 or early 2030.

Officials predict in the document that the caseload will grow to more than 100,000 before then, unless there is further action.

Earlier this year, retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the government end jury trial for many serious offences, saying they could be dealt with by a judge alone or sitting with two magistrates.

This would be done by creating a new intermediate tier of criminal court, dubbed the "Crown Court Bench Division" (CCBD), sitting in between magistrates' courts and Crown Courts, where juries decide cases.

The CCBD would hear cases involving defendants facing sentences of up to three years, Sir Brian recommended.

The "DPM's [deputy prime minister's] decision", according to the leaked MoJ document, is to "go further than Sir Brian's to achieve maximum impact".

Under current law, only certain "indictable offenses" require trial by jury. This is cognate with the US's indictable offenses, which generally carry sentences of more than one year.

Compare the US's system, in which trial by jury is presumptively guaranteed for any crime carrying potential punishment greater than six months (separate from whether the crime is a felony), but this is sidestepped by pushing more than 90 percent of defendants to plead guilty. Plea bargaining apparently is not common in the UKGBNI.

House of Commons debate

Sarah Sackman, Minister for Courts and Legal Services: The vast majority of cases in our courts are already heard without juries. Around 90% of all criminal cases are dealt with robustly and fairly by magistrates, with no jury.

Sarah Sackman: I spoke to a victim of child sexual abuse who had waited years for his day in court. A couple of weeks before his trial date, he was given the devastating news that the trial had been adjourned for another year. I regret to say that he sought to take his own life upon hearing that. Luckily, his attempt did not work, but if we ever needed a more graphic illustration of the weight that these intolerable delays place on victims —on real people’s lives—that is it. That is why we have to do whatever it takes to bring down these backlogs.

Jeremy Corbyn: This is, I think, the third attempt by successive Governments to reduce the right to trial by jury. It is a fundamental right in our system that should not be undermined, and particularly not because the Government have a current and, hopefully, temporary problem with capacity. In answer to the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), the Minister recognised that the Lammy inquiry of 2017 found that jury trials are more objective than judge-only trials, less likely to be racially biased and likely to give a fairer outcome. Is the Minister really content that we should be walking away from the jury trial system because of the current problems? Instead, is the answer not, as other hon. Members have suggested, to invest more in the system to deal with the appalling backlog, which she rightly says we have?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats