The English Magistracy
By FRANK MILTON, Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, London.
The English judicial system is unique in many respects. The thing which foreigners find particularly surprising is the part which laymen play in its administration. The "Magistrates' Courts", in which over 97 % of criminal cases are decided, are manned by some 16,000 "Magistrates". Of these only 48 are salaried, full-time, professional lawyers ("Stipendiary Magistrates"), of whom 36 sit in London, while the rest are thinly spread among the big provincial centres of population. The rest of the 16,000 are "Justices of the Peace" or "Lay Magistrates". Only a few of these have professional qualifications. They work on a part-time basis — on an average perhaps each sits in court on twenty or thirty days a year. For centuries they have been affectionately known as the "great unpaid", though arrangements are now being made to enable them (when the country's economic position permits) to be compensated for loss of earnings. They have occasionally been described (with less affection) as the"great unlearned", but this too is becoming out-of-date, as the Lord Chancellor, who is the nearest English equivalent to the continental Ministers of Justice, now insists that all "J. Ps" (as the Justices of the Peace are invariably called) should undergo a prescribed course of training before they embark upon their judicial duties.
Like many other English institutions, the magistracy has its roots far back in the country's history. It can be traced with precision for more than six centuries, and with reasonable certainty for nearly two more. During this long period the institution has undergone many vicissitudes: the status, prestige, power, and function of the magistrates have varied greatly from time to time. They have had their ups and downs. At the height of their power, which lasted through most of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, they were the most influential class of men in England. After 1800 great areas of authority were removed into other hands. Later still the pendulum started swinging back towards them, a movement which may still be going on.
The present post-war crime wave is placing a severe strain upon the English judicial system. It was an earlier war and post-warcrime wave which was responsible for the magistracy coming into