The demands of my current position did mean that I had to catch up with developments in criminal law over the past eight years, and that proved quite a task.Nicely put, Your Lordship.
I enrolled on the Judicial Studies Board Criminal Law Continuation Course - for me it was very much an induction course.......
I was astonished and concerned at the complexity of the sentencing exercise that a judge is required to perform. There has been a deluge of legislation over recent years affecting sentencing.
This, together with the guidance of the Sentencing Guidelines Council, restricts the scope of the discretion that a judge previously enjoyed when deciding on the appropriate sentence.
It takes a lot of study to master the intricacies of sentencing today, which can result in criticisms of sentences by those who have not conducted such study being wide of the mark.
I have asked Lord Justice Keene, who chairs the Judicial Studies Board, whether he can lay on a sentencing induction course for Home Secretaries. He is considering this, but has warned me that the frequency of such courses would have resource implications.
Musings and Snippets from a recently retired JP. I served for 31 years, mostly in west London. I was Chairman of my Bench for some years, and a member of the National Bench Chairmen's Forum All cases are based on real ones, but anonymised and composited. All opinions are those of one or more individuals. JPs swear to enforce the law of the land, whether or not they approve of it. Nothing on here constitutes legal advice.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
A Nice Line From The Lord Chief
The Lord Chief Justice spoke last night at a top-level dinner. This bit of his speech caught my eye:-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Posts are pre-moderated. Please bear with us if this takes a little time, but the number of bores and obsessives was getting out of hand, as were the fake comments advertising rubbish.