Justice and Punishment: Understanding the Judicial System and Sentencing

Justice and Punishment

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
LO1: Understand the composition and roles of the judicial system................................................4
LO2: Understand how the judicial system is used for justice and punishment...............................6
LO3: Understand the ethical dilemmas surrounding sentencing.....................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
Reference List................................................................................................................................10

Introduction
Judges and magistrates are the most important people in the administration of justice in a
country’s judiciary. They execute the criminal offenders of the society by sentencing them with
the rightful punishment. Administration of justice is the most essential part of the society. In this
report, we cover the appointment of magistrates and judges along with the process of criminal
prosecution by evaluating its effect on the judiciary. It consist an elaborate understanding of the
criminal court justice, effectiveness of judicial punishment, increase of court fee and judicial
sentencing.

LO1: Understand the composition and roles of the judicial system
1.1 Describe the appointment procedures for judges and magistrates
Appointment of magistrates
A magistrate in the United Kingdom can only be appointed if he fall is the age group of eighteen
to seventy. To become a magistrate one should be capable of carrying out minimum of twenty-
six half-day court sittings in one year. Local Advisory Committees in each region recruit the
magistrates. It takes place at different times from depending upon the area of jurisdiction.
Magistrates do not require any formal legal qualifications or trainings (Roeber et al., 2017)
Candidates must have six chief qualities– excellent character; Committed and reliable; socially
aware; quality of sound judgement; communicative and mature. Once appointed as a magistrate,
he or she must undertake the mandatory training held by the English judicial authority. An
association of forty-seven local advisory committees, comprising of local non-magistrates and
serving magistrate
Appointment of judges
The High Court and Supreme Court judges are given the tile of justice and are known by that.
The appointment of the Supreme Court judge is governed under the Schedule 8 and sections 25
to 31, of the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005. It is regulated under the amendment made by
the Crime and Courts Act 2013 (Delaney et al., 2016). This memo provides a concise
documentation of the process. The Queen appoints the judges in the courts of the United
Kingdom until different specifications are implied. According to the English law, section 25 of
the Act of 2005 are regarding legislative requirements for appointment.
1.2 Evaluate the implications of the appointment process for judicial independence
The constitutional theory of UK requires their judiciary to be separate from the independent
government. However, in many cases, government indulges in the working of the judiciary
largely influencing it for political benefits. In order to ensure the law is enforced and executed
impartially, a fresh legal appointment commission started to function in April 2006. It ended the
position of Lord Chancellor as head of the judiciary and it finished his power to appoint judges