The UK’s most senior judge has questioned the value of disclosure of documents and cross-examination of witnesses.
Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court, expressed his “rather heretical” view during the Neill lecture to the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law.
He said he was sceptical that many cases were “decided by a ‘smoking gun’ found on the often enormously time consuming and expensive exercise of disclosure and inspection of documents”. Where a “smoking gun” was found, the case would often have been decided the same way and more cheaply without disclosure, he said. Moreover, “further down the litigation road, apparently smoking guns frequently turn out not to be smoking or even guns”.
“As for cross-examination, most of the best points that emerge from questioning can be made much more shortly in argument,” he said.
Lord Neuberger is due to step down in the autumn. An appointments exercise is currently under way to find his successor.
