New High Court Judge

The Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Miss Elisabeth Mary Caroline Laing, Q.C., to be a Justice of the High Court with effect from 29 April 2014 on the retirement of Mr. Justice Keith on 14 April 2014.

Public lawyer from 11KBW of great repute, had a career break to look after her children and recently acted for Lewisham LBC in quashing DH's big ideas about closing down some of the useful bits of Lewisham Hospital unlawfully - although HMG is just changing the law to get round the problem....

Useful addition to the Admin Court, in which she has sat as a Deputy since 2010.

Don't really like the idea of positive discrimination

because the best person should get the job -

but then you read the statistics and realise that there are 5 BME High Court Judges out of 108 and no more at a higher position.  15 BME of 654 Circuit Judges and 27 BME Civil DJs of 446 in total.  The judicial trainees are where it gets even more worrying -  68 BME Recorders out of 1196 and 39 of 764 DDJs (Civil) or in other words there is no hope of the full time judicial numbers getting much better in the near future.  4.8% BME of the total judiciary!  13 of the 100 new QCs are BME (of the 225 applicants, 32 were BME).  Only 10% of practising Bar is BME.

Time for positive discrimination? Time for quotas? Check out this bewildering Belgian example....

Don't like it, instinctively think it is unfair to the non-protected characteristic candidates?  But then something must be done.............Perhaps if two candidates are equal in merit, the BME gets the role?

What's the answer?

& so as foreshadowed in this blog it came to pass, county courts RIP

The CPR is to be amended, probably from 21st April, to reflect the abolition of the county courts and replacement by one single national County Court.


4. In the Rules and in CCR Order 27—

(a)unless amended elsewhere in these rules —

(i)for “a county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”;

(ii)for “county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “County Court”;

(iii)for “county courts”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”; and

(iv)for “district judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “District Judge”;

What we used to call and attend as county courts - i.e. the buildings will now be called County Court Hearing Centres.  Another small innovation is that district and circuit judges are being capitalised in the new legislative arrangements:

1) Subject to paragraph 2), in each practice direction— 

a) for “a county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”; 

b) for “any county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”;  5

c) for “county court”, in each place it occurs, substitute “County Court”;

d) for “county courts”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”; 

e) for “circuit judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Circuit Judge”; 

f) for “Circuit judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Circuit Judge”; 

g) for “designated civil judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Designated 

Civil Judge”; 

h) for “district judge”, in each place it occurs, substitute “District Judge”; 

i) for “master”, in each place it occurs, substitute “Master”; and 

j) for “the county courts”, in each place it occurs, substitute “the County Court”. 

Well bye bye county courts........and in particular my favourite and the oldest civil court in the world, the Crime and Courts Act 2013 repeals the following:

(2) For the purpose of establishing a court to exercise so much of the jurisdiction previously exercised by the Mayor's and City of London Court as is appropriate to a county court and for exercising any other jurisdiction which may hereafter be conferred on a county court, the City of London shall, by virtue of this section, become a county court district and accordingly the enactments relating to county courts shall apply in relation to the county court for the City of London as they apply in relation to a county court for any other county court district.

(3) Without prejudice to subsection (1) above, the county court for the district constituted by subsection (2) above shall be known as the Mayor's and City of London Court and the Circuit judge assigned to that district under section 20(1) of this Act shall be known as the judge of the Mayor's and City of London Court.

But curiously not this:

The courthouse and accommodation which up to the appointed day have been respectively known as the Central Criminal Court and the Mayor's and City of London Court shall continue to be known by those names, and it shall be the duty of the Common Council of the City of London (in this section referred to as “the Common Council”) to continue to make the said premises available for use for the sittings and business of those courts respectively.

Not sure what all that means?