Magistrates' Courts and the Ideology of Justice

Abstract

Magistrates' courts have frequently attracted comment for their role as a conveyor belt for the guilty pleas which constitute 95% of their caseload. Far less attention has been paid to their contested trials, even though, as a recent research study for the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure notes, by far the majority of contested trials are heard before magistrates.[2] This article draws on observational research into contested trials in magistrates' courts,[3] to consider two very different levels of sociological problem. First there is the plight of the unrepresented defendant, the focal point of most sociological and social policy studies of the courts. This article tries to offer a fresh approach by locating the problem not just in the social class of the defendant or the informal games played by courtroom personnel, but in the structure of magistrates' justice. Second, there are the ideological problems posed by the departure of the magistrates' courts from central tenets of the rhetoric of justice. This article seeks to locate this departure not just in the practice of magistrates but in the institutional basis of magistrates' justice. It tries to demonstrate the problems posed for the ideology of justice and the legitimations by which they are resolved. The research on which the article draws was done in Scotland. Legal institutions in Scotland and England do vary and any problems of generalisability are discussed where they arise.[4]

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