Criminal

Sir Brian Leveson’s claim that there is ‘no right to jury trial’ erects a constitutional straw man, argues Professor Graham Zellick KC in NLJ this week. He argues that Leveson dismantles a position almost no-one truly holds, and thereby obscures the deeper issue: the jury’s place within the UK’s constitutional tradition

Cracked trials and weak cases: Professor Michael Zander revisits his landmark 1993 Crown Court Study in this week's NLJ, arguing that its insights remain strikingly current

Professor Graham Zellick KC considers what it means to say there is no right to trial by jury

Criminal defence lawyers have expressed dismay at the Lord Chancellor David Lammy’s plans to reduce the backlog by scaling back jury trials to murder, rape, homicide and other indictable crimes where the sentence is three years or more

Legal aid lawyers have welcomed increased fees for criminal, housing and immigration work

Three decades ago, Professor Michael Zander conducted a unique nationwide study of Crown Court cases. The study is now accessible online. He says the findings are still relevant today

Writing in NLJ this week, Manvir Kaur Grewal of Corker Binning analyses the collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh, where a terrorism charge failed because prosecutors lacked statutory consent. The case, she argues, highlights how procedural safeguards—time limits, consent requirements and institutional checks—define lawful state power

Michael Zander KC, emeritus professor at LSE, revisits his long-forgotten Crown Court Study (1993), which surveyed 22,000 participants across 3,000 cases, in the first of a two-part series for NLJ

The collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh reveals how procedural safeguards anchor the rule of law & keep prosecutorial power within constitutional bounds, writes Manvir Kaur Grewal

The legal profession's leaders have mounted a robust defence of trial by jury, following reports that Justice Secretary David Lammy is considering restricting it to rape, murder, manslaughter and other cases that are in the public interest