Lecture by the Lady Chief Justice: The Constitutional Reform Act – 20 Years On
The Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, gave the Blackstone Lecture on 28 November 2025 at Pembroke College, Oxford.
The lecture, entitled The Constitutional Reform Act – 20 Years On, can be read and downloaded below.
Introduction
Reform in haste. Repent at leisure. Is that the story of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 – the CRA –, which this year marks its twentieth anniversary? Some might suggest so. Some might take another view, a more positive one. And others might follow the approach said to have been taken by Zhou Enlai. When asked in 1972 about the effect of the French Revolution he said, ‘it’s too early to tell’. Of course, he was actually speaking about the 1968 student protests in France and not the era of Robespierre, Danton and Napoleon. But, why let facts get in the way of a good story.
My focus today though is not on how successful the reforms over the last twenty years have been. It is, rather, on what lessons we can learn from the CRA where the nature of reform is concerned. It is the manner in which reform has been carried out – on the process and not the substance of reform.
To do this I want to look back first to an earlier period of significant constitutional reform, that which occurred in the 19th century. I particularly want to compare the approach taken in 2004 with that taken by the reformers who oversaw the creation of the High Court and Court of Appeal in the 1870s and who intended to usher in the abolition of the House of Lords’ appellate jurisdiction. In many ways those Victorian reformers were willing to go much further in their aims than, perhaps, we might be prepared to go today.
In approaching the comparison between the two reform periods, I identify three, interlinked, themes. The first is Ad-hocery or Deliberation: a theme that the Master of Pembroke College has commented on several times.[1] By ad-hocery is meant a short-term approach, that reacts to events as best it can with what lies available at hand without any real ability to give consideration to the long-term. To be contrasted with Deliberation, which takes a long-term view. The second is the substantive basis of reform: Principle or Pragmatism. And, finally, a theme which focuses on the extent of reform: should it be systemic or piecemeal.
Before turning to these themes it is helpful briefly to remind ourselves of the key features of the two reform periods.
Justice and reform in the 19th century
First, the 19th century. It is sometimes said that if a litigant from the early 1800s were to stumble into a time machine and find themselves in court today they would find much that they would recognise. The courts would look the same. The judges would be wearing the same wigs and gowns. The procedure would be broadly the same. And so on. It is an interesting line to take but, as with many stories, it glosses over the true picture to a significant extent.
A litigant in the early to mid-years of the 19th century would have experienced a legal system vastly different to that which we have today. As a starting point, they would have had to navigate a vast range of courts. If they wished to pursue a civil claim, were they to bring it in one of the local county courts? Might they need to pursue it in one of the historic courts of limited, specialist, jurisdiction, such as the stannary courts? Or might they have to pursue it in one of the superior common law courts: the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of King’s Bench, the Court of Exchequer. Or would they be delving into equity in the High Court of Chancery? If they were to bring their claim in any of the former three courts, they would need to catch the Clapham Omnibus, as that would deposit them outside Westminster Hall where those courts sat. If it was Chancery, then they might have needed to travel a little further to Lincoln’s Inn where, depending on the time of year, the Chancery Court sat. All more than slightly different from travelling to the Royal Courts of Justice or to a county court hearing centre, as would happen today.
Let’s assume our Victorian has chosen the correct court. Have they then also chosen the correct cause of action, along with its particular procedural rules? Will they be appearing before judge and jury in one of the common law courts, or before the Lord Chancellor or the Master of the Rolls in the Chancery Court. Will their court fees go towards paying the judge’s salary. And who will be advising and representing them: will it be an attorney-at-law, a solicitor-in-equity, a proctor if the claim is being pursued in an ecclesiastical court. Will the advocate be a barrister or a serjeant-at-law?
And that’s just the civil courts. Criminal, family, appellate jurisdictions all add to the complexity and, it has to be said, significant differences that exist between then and now. To focus on the fact that our judges and barristers, and only some of them, wear similar court dress to that worn in the 19th century and on the fact that court room design remains very close to the design of some Victorian courts is to gloss over the manifold differences between then and now.
Throughout the course of the 19th century those differences were gradually and then rapidly eroded and then removed in their entirety.[2] The major break from the past came in the 1870s, however: specifically through the Judicature Acts 1873 to 1875. They swept away the myriad of historical courts, merging many of them into the High Court of Justice, which would from the 1880s sit in the new Royal Courts of Justice rather than Westminster Hall or Lincolns Inn. They saw the creation of a single Court of Appeal, which at the time only had civil jurisdiction. A criminal court of appeal was not created until 1907,[3] with its jurisdiction being merged with that of the Court of Appeal in 1966.[4]
The 1873 to 1875 reforms also saw the creation of a single set of procedural rules – the Rules of the Supreme Court – for the new High Court and Court of Appeal. Serjeants-at-law passed away with the disappearance of the Court of Common Pleas.[5] The judiciary too was reformed. No longer would they be judges of specific courts. They would now be judges of the new High Court and, in some cases, Court of Appeal. The Lord Chancellor would become President of the High Court and the most senior member of the judiciary, with the Lord Chief Justice of England, its President in the Lord Chancellor’s absence.[6]
The reforms also saw the professions of attorney and proctor merged with that of solicitor, so that the two main branches of the legal profession in 1875 would be what we know today: barristers and solicitors.[7] And, as for the House of Lords, the 1873 Act swept away the right to appeal there. Its sections 20, 21 and 55 envisaged that appeals to the new Court of Appeal would be final appeals. But then the Victorians had a change of heart and the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 recreated, on a statutory footing, the House of Lord’s appellate jurisdiction. It also created the Law Lords.
Drawing the strands together, the 1870 reforms saw: the replacement of courts and their procedures that had been in place since the early development of the common law with a new unitary High Court. They created a civil court of appeal. They abolished and then recreated the House of Lords as the final court of Appeal. And they reshaped the structure of the legal profession. Not an inconsiderable amount of constitutional reform of the judicial branch of the State.
21st century reform
What of the 21st century? It reshaped the 1873-1875 settlement. As we all know, it left the Lord Chancellor shorn of his office as a judge and head of the judiciary. The latter role was formally taken by the Lord Chief Justice. It consequently required the creation of a unique branch of the civil service to support the judiciary in carrying out the whole range of functions transferred to the Lord Chief Justice.[8] The Lord Chancellor also lost his office as Speaker of the House of Lords, although, since the CRA, Lord Chancellors have additionally held the office of Secretary of State for Justice.
The CRA also took from the Lord Chancellor the power to appoint the judiciary. That was given to the Judicial Appointments Commission, although the Lord Chancellor retains an important role within the overall appointment process. And, it transferred the House of Lords’ appellate jurisdiction to a new UK Supreme Court. These too were not inconsiderable constitutional reforms.
We should also take note of three related reforms. First, the transformation of the Lord Chancellor’s Department into, initially, the Department of Constitutional Affairs and then into the Ministry of Justice in May 2007. Secondly, the reform and unification of a wide range of tribunals into the First-tier and Upper Tribunal through the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. In many ways this replicated the approach taken by the Victorians in their creation of the High Court from the myriad of common law courts. And, finally, the Legal Services Act 2007, which fundamentally reshaped the regulation of the legal profession, not least through creating the Legal Services Board as the professions’ oversight regulatory and requiring the establishment of functional separation between the representative and regulatory roles of the existing regulators. And all this came before perhaps the most far-reaching transformation of all: that which is digitalising our justice systems. But that is another story, for another day.
Having set the scene, I now want to turn to my three substantive themes. First, ad-hocery or deliberate design.
Ad-hoc or deliberate design
Let me first take a short step back in time. It is December 1998. The New Labour Government has been in office for approximately eighteen months. Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, is invited to give a lecture at UCL’s Constitution Unit. Its title: [The] Government’s Programme of Constitutional Reform.[9] It is a detailed lecture that repays rereading. It started by outlining how the Government had spent its time in Opposition, which Lord Irvine described as ‘the constitutional wilderness years’ preparing the ground thoroughly for constitutional reform. As he put it, ‘No other Government [in the 20th century had] embarked upon so significant or wide-ranging a programme of constitutional reform.’[10] He went on to explain what that included. This included a detailed account of devolution, of the creation of new governance for London, for regional government reform, modernisation of the House of Commons, House of Lords reform, the introduction of freedom of information legislation, and human rights reform. It made no mention of the creation of a Supreme Court or the abolition of the office of the Lord Chancellor. As we all know the Government then went on to implement very many of the reforms he identified.
Let us then move forward to June 2003. The Prime Minister wishes to embark, as many had done before and many have done since, on what is known as, and he thought of as, ‘machinery of government’ change.[11] No longer would there be a Lord Chancellor. No longer would there be a Lord Chancellor’s Department. Just like any other Secretary of State and Department or Ministry of State, they would be reorganised and recast by Prime Ministerial fiat. And moreover, there would be a new UK Supreme Court. But. There is always said to be a ‘but’. In this case there was. It was that the proposal did not grapple with the constitutional fundamentals. As the Constitution Committee lamented, it showed a lack of awareness of ‘the fundamentals of the constitution’, citing a
‘. . . prime example of confusion about whether an initiative is a simple “machinery of government” change or a major constitutional reform was the announcement in June 2003—in the midst of a Cabinet reshuffle—that the office of Lord Chancellor was to be abolished and that a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom was to be established. That announcement took place without any apparent understanding of the legal status of the Lord Chancellor and without consultation with the judiciary (or anyone else outside government).’[12]
The office of Lord Chancellor was not just another Secretary of State. It was, in fact, entirely separate from the office of Secretary of State. It was also an office that had many, very many, specific statutory functions that also could not simply be hived off to a new office of State. At least, as was rapidly realised, not without primary legislation. And the creation of a new court and the transfer of the House of Lords’ appellate jurisdiction could not simply be done at the stroke of a pen. That too required primary legislation.
Shortly after the announcement of these constitutional significant changes, negotiations began between Lord Falconer, newly installed as Lord Chancellor, and Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice. The outcome of those negotiations was a document that became known as the Concordat. It set out a set of agreed principles between the Government and Judiciary concerning constitutional reform and the allocation of the Lord Chancellor’s historic functions between the two.[13] It formed the basis on which the CRA was then drafted and ultimately enacted.
We can contrast this with the 19th century approach. Then the courts and judiciary experienced a near half century of reform spurred on by the need to secure what we would call access to justice. As we all know from Dickens’ vivid account of litigation in Bleak House, the common law and equity courts were not places for the faint-hearted, for those who did not have very significant financial resources or for those who required a judgment in good time.
19th century reform came in a welter of legislation, from the County Courts Act 1846 via the Court of Chancery (England) Act 1850, the Common Law Procedure Act 1854 and the Court of Chancery Act 1860, amongst many others. That legislation was, however, itself very often – if not always – the product of detailed consideration by numerous Royal Commissions, such as the Royal Commissions on the Process, Practice and System of Pleading in the superior Courts of the Common Law, which reported in the early 1850s or that on the Taking of Evidence in Chancery, which reported in 1860.
When these various Commissions and the resulting legislative reforms failed to cure the justice system’s manifold problems, a further Royal Commission was appointed: the Judicature Commission. Over the course of five detailed reports, drawing on a wide-range of evidence,[14] it made detailed recommendations concerning the restructuring of the courts and judiciary. Those recommendations, not all of which were accepted, formed the basis of the Judicature Act 1873 to 1875 reforms.
What is apparent from the 19th century is that its approach to the constitutional reform of the courts and judiciary was one that had a clear objective – to eliminate the cost, delay and complexity that undermined real access to justice. It was an approach that was evidence-based. It was the product of serious and careful deliberation. Similar points can be made about the suite of reforms that Lord Irvine identified in his UCL lecture. As he made clear, they were the product of detailed consideration by the Labour Party when it was in opposition. Each element of those reforms was understood to form part of a deliberate design that was intended to be a coherent plan. As he put it,
‘We made conscious choices about precisely which aspects of our constitution needed earliest attention, and on what basis. We are conscious of the way different elements of any constitutional settlement can impact on each other.’[15]
It was anything but ad-hoc.
When we turn to the circumstances of the CRA, it is not so readily apparent that it was the product of detailed deliberation. All parties involved agree it was carried out without consultation, whether that was internal government consultation or with the judiciary.[16]. It had also evidently not been considered by the Government prior to 1998. If it had been, then Lord Irvine might well have mentioned it in his lecture to UCL in 1998. Equally, if it had been the product of careful deliberation he would not, again as all the parties involved agree, been in the dark about it until its imminence started to be reported in the newspapers in 2003. All of this might well suggest it was a little more ad-hoc than previous reform.
Perhaps not, though. In evidence to the House of Lords’ Constitution Committee, Tony Blair in 2009, by that time no longer Prime Minister, provided the rationale for the CRA reforms. As he explained, they formed part of his Government’s mandate to reform law and order and to make the Home Office a more effective crime-fighting department. More broadly, it was, as he put it, to improve flaws in ‘our criminal law system’. Reforming the role of the Lord Chancellor so that his role focused on the running of the courts and so that they operated to the same law and order agenda as the Home Office, creating a separate speaker of the House of Lords and introducing an independent judicial appointments commission was inextricably part of that. No mention of the creation of a Supreme Court was, however, noted in the rationale. It is perhaps difficult to see how that could have been said to make the criminal justice system work more effectively. While acknowledging that the route to reform was ‘bumpy’, Mr Blair concluded that ‘no political party now seeks to change the substance of what we did. [And that it was], frankly, an obvious modernisation.’[17]
The need for reforms may have been obvious. And no one may have suggested in 2009 that what was done could be subject to challenge. But was the CRA the product of a deliberate, considered set of reforms or was it an ad-hoc reform. Given the differences in approach between them, it is perhaps fair to say that it was less the product of deliberation that the previous two sets of reforms. It is possible to argue that it was an ad-hoc reform, one that was focused more on criminal justice, one that took less account than it might have done of the constitutional nature of the reforms being proposed. That it was originally thought that the reforms could be achieved as a simple machinery of government change might, as the Constitution Committee had it, do more than suggest that the true constitutional nature of the reforms was not as fully appreciated as it ought to have been.
It is, of course, true to say that there were detailed deliberation into how to effect the reforms after the reforms were announced. The Concordat between the Government and the Judiciary was forged. Detailed scrutiny of the legislation took place both by Parliament and by a Judicial Working Party, which included both the future Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, and future Supreme Court Justice, Lady Arden. Further examination was carried out by Parliament and particularly the Bill Committee. All of this scrutiny – by all three branches of the State – serves to emphasise the important constitutional nature of the reforms, and that the reforms went well beyond improving the criminal justice system. But would not the Victorian approach of advance consultation, deliberation and discussion perhaps have lightened the load overall.
Principle or Pragmatism
That leads to my second theme. The 1870 reforms were not just the product of lengthy and detailed deliberation. They were also the product of previously determined explicit principles. For the Victorians, the guiding principle of their reforms was a simple one. It was to better enable the courts and judiciary to deliver justice. By this, they meant that reform should make it easier for the courts to decide disputes on their substantive merits. Courts and procedure should be designed and implemented so as to best achieve this. Specific reforms, such as the creation of the High Court, the creation of a new and simpler code of procedure – the Rules of the Supreme Court – a non-technical approach to the application of that code, were all intended to give effect to that overriding reform principle.
A similar approach was taken to the post-1997 suite of reforms. Again, Lord Irvine explained it in his 1998 lecture. The approach taken by the government was one of ‘pragmatism based on principle.’ It was based on the idea that our constitution was not and ought not to be static, unchanging. It was, on the contrary, one that the Victorians well-understood to be capable of incremental reform based on liberal constitutional principle.[18] Given the far-reaching nature of the 1870s, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the Victorians were prepared to be both incremental in their approach to reform and much bolder and more radical when they concluded that was necessary and justified. And those principles that were to guide reform? Lord Irvine identified them as: the promotion of accountability, transparency and openness in governance, fairness, and the promotion of a rights-based culture.[19] Those principles guided the development of, for instance, devolution, the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998 and reforms to freedom of information laws.
What then were the principles that guided the pragmatism of the CRA reforms? Those were worked out within the negotiations that resulted in the Concordat. As Lord Falconer made clear, it set ‘out the basic principles on which the judges and the executive will relate to each other in the future.’[20] Those basic principles informed the provisions contained in the CRA. They continue to guide the relationship between the judiciary and the Executive, not least through the framework that would be put in place from 2005 for negotiations between the two concerning financial support for the courts and judiciary. They included, for instance, the aim of reinforcing judicial independence, of creating statutory clarity and transparency concerning the roles and responsibilities of the Government and Judiciary where the courts and judiciary were concerned, not least that as a matter of principle the Government should be required to provide sufficient resources for the administration of the courts. Other principles set out requirements concerning rules of court, judicial deployment and training, judicial discipline, and judicial appointments. No principles were set out concerning improvements to the criminal justice system. Nor was anything said about how or in what principled way the successor to the Lord Chancellor’s Department could ensure that the courts would align themselves with Home Office policy on the delivery of criminal justice.
The Concordat is a detailed document. It continues to inform the approach to the CRA and to the judiciary’s relationship with government. Its principles have, in very large part, stood the test of time and are a tribute to all those involved in its development and agreement. They were, however, developed after the fact of reform and its contours had been determined. It might be said that the principles were a pragmatic consequence of reform, which in turn went on to shape the exact nature of the reform. That is a different starting point from both the 1870s and the post-1997 reforms where principle led to the pragmatic, principle-based legislation. For Lord Irvine the latter reforms were principle-based pragmatism. It might be said the CRA was the product of pragmatism-based principles.
Does it matter that this was the approach taken in 2004? In his evidence to the Constitution Committee in 2009, Mr Blair thought not. It might even be the case, as Lord Falconer is reported to have suggested earlier this year, that advance consultation could have derailed the whole process: discussion and consultation given the wide-ranging nature of the reforms might, it appears to have been suggested, could have resulted in the Government backing away from the reform project.[21] Perhaps. I leave that to those interested in counter-factual history. That twenty years on the CRA and the constitutional settlement it brought about remains intact is perhaps a stronger point in favour of it not really mattering that principle did not come first.
One response to that, however, could be that we might be in a better position now if principle had come first. We might, for instance, have taken steps to refashion the Lord Chancellor’s Department along the lines adopted when its successor, the Department of Constitutional Affairs, was transformed into the Ministry of Justice in 2007, two years after the CRA came into force. This too, as is well-known, was a development that came about without any prior consultation, but which gave effect to a transfer of responsibilities from the Home Office. Reforms that, by giving responsibility for prisons to the new Ministry of Justice, were perhaps more in line with Mr Blair’s rationale for embarking on the reforms that produced the CRA. We might also have thought more widely then about the nature and structure of the reforms to the tribunals that would come in 2007.
We might also have been able to consider the underpinnings of the administration of the courts and tribunals from a more detailed and principled perspective than was achieved in the Concordat and subsequently given effect. We may even, as was considered in 2013, have placed His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service on a statutory footing as a corporate body, independent of Government and run as a formal partnership between the Government and Judiciary.[22] Such an approach could have given effect to the principles articulated in the Concordat and, with greater consideration at the time, could have formed part of the CRA reforms.
If it had, we might then have avoided having to deal with the need to revise the structure of, and the judiciary’s involvement in, court administration in 2007 when the Ministry of Justice was created. In 2007, as part of that administration a senior judge was a non-executive member of the Department of Constitutional Affairs’ (the DCA) corporate board.[23] They were there to provide a senior judicial voice where court administration was concerned. This was intended to give effect to the Concordat’s commitment to creating a Unified Court Agency with effective judicial input into its management.[24] When the DCA was transformed into the Ministry of Justice through the responsibility of prisons being transferred to it from the Home Office, a judge could no longer sit on its corporate board. To do so would have infringed judicial independence. To continue maintenance of the Concordat settlement concerning court administration, the court service was reconstituted as His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, a more formal partnership between the Government and Judiciary. Consideration of tribunals reform at the same time might also have ensured that its administration formed part of that structure from the outset and not from 2011, as was the case.
Systemic design?
Inherent in all of this is my third consideration. Adopting an approach where there is deliberation, where principle leads pragmatism, might, in other words, have enabled us to take a more systemic and systematic approach to constitutional reform. As it was, the reform process that led to the CRA, unlike that of the 1870s and the post-1997 period, was piecemeal in effect, even if it was wide-ranging. A more systematic approach could have effected a wide-ranging systems change that could have encompassed the courts and tribunals as well as their administration. It could also, as in the 1870s, have encompassed consideration of the legal profession. It might even have facilitated the pursuit of criminal justice reform, the stated aim of the CRA reforms, to be achieved more effectively.
Lessons for future reform
What lessons should we then take from the different reform periods? Let me start with one that I am not suggesting we take. The hallmark of the 19th century approach to reform was to establish a Royal Commission. They are few and far between now. One important lesson may, however, be to engage in considered deliberation after identification of a clear set of questions and issues for exploration. Clarity of scope and timescale will, as was the case in the 1870s, likely promote the identification of principle and the development of pragmatic recommendations for implementation. It ought also to lead to a more systematic and systemic approach, depending on the terms of reference.
Taking such an approach leads naturally to the second lesson. Reform should be not only considered; it should be principle-led but tempered by pragmatism. We should not aim for crystalline perfection but rather for what works, where that is consistent with principle.
Taken together, the first and second lessons will lead us away from falling into ad-hocery. They will promote greater deliberation. The other lesson to take is that, while we can properly and very often should make running repairs to our justice systems, fixing problems when they arise, making discrete improvements where and when necessary, we should ensure that in doing so we take a systemic approach. We should consider the knock-on effects of individual reforms to the overall justice eco-system. We should, moreover, try to ensure that we take a holistic approach to individual and wider scale reforms: an approach that, again, is guided by principle and a focus on the system as a whole and its operation.
We should therefore not shy away from making significant systemic changes where necessary. The Victorians, whom we perhaps now see too often as bastions of tradition – perhaps because so many of our traditions stem from that period – were distinctly radical when they needed to be. There can be little more radical, perhaps, than sweeping away the great common law and equity courts and replacing them with a shiny, new unitary High Court.
Standing where we are today, it is remarkable to remember that the Victorians intended their new High Court’s five Divisions to be no more than a temporary measure. The Victorians intended the structure to be altered or replaced, and no doubt renamed in the process (they initially wanted to call them the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on Divisions, rather than keep the historic names of the courts they replaced). That we still have three of the five original Divisions says perhaps more about our conservatism and adherence to tradition than was the case or was anticipated in the 1870s. But then, as is the ancient Greeks put it, there is nothing more permanent than the temporary.
What this perhaps should tell us is that we should be bolder in our approach to reform. The time may have come for us to think about rationalising the governance and organisation of the judiciary, to take account of modern conditions. A few brief thoughts.
In 1873, there were very few commercial cases, and almost no administrative cases before the courts. Now, the Business and Property Courts are thriving, and there are tens of thousands of disputes between the citizen and the state heard in numerous tribunals and in the administrative court. Some might say that our three existing High Court Divisions no longer represent the work we actually do. In the High Court, but also across the system, our judges hear broadly 5 categories of case: criminal cases, civil cases, family cases, business and property cases and administrative and tribunal cases. Perhaps we should think about whether judicial leadership and the High Court Divisions should not more accurately reflect the types of work that are actually being done by our courts in 2025. The Victorians in their principle-based approach to reform in the 1870s might well have thought we should do so.
Separately, there are currently over 150 separate judicial offices. Is there a case to be made for most judges to appointed to only a very few categories, with regional deployment and jurisdiction-specific ticketing – and softer boundaries between the High Court and the County Court?
In thinking of these questions and constitutional reform of the courts and judiciary in general, principle, pragmatism, a willingness to be bold where being bold is the order of the day, delivered through taking a systematic approach that is both conceived and delivered in a considered way ought to be the approach we take in the future. If we take such an approach, we will – I am sure – benefit from the lessons taught by the Judicature Act and CRA reforms.
Thank you.[25]
[1] See most recently, Sir Ernest Ryder, The Future of Justice, (UCL, 16 June 2025), which is available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/sites/laws/files/the-future-of-justice-sir-ernest-ryder.docx.
[2] For a short summary of the reform process during this period see, Lord Clarke MR, The Woolf Reforms: A Singular Event or an Ongoing Process, in D. Dwyer, The Civil Procedure Rules Ten Years On, (OUP, 2009) at 37 – 41.
[3] Criminal Appeal Act 1907; a nascent criminal appeal court had been created in 1848: Crown Cases Act 1848.
[4] Criminal Appeal Act 1966, s.1.
[5] J. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, (OUP, 2019) at 174.
[6] Judicature Act 1873, ss.5 and 6.
[7] Judicature Act 1873, s.87.
[8] See, for instance, Constitutional Reform Act 2005, s.7.
[9] The lecture is available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-historical-sciences/sites/social_historical_sciences/files/35.pdf.
[10] Lord Irvine ibid.
[11] In respect of which see Lord Irvine LC’s account of the gestation of the reform, Evidence of Lord Irvine LC to the House of Lords, Selection Committee on the Constitution, Session 2009-2010 (and the response by the Prime Minister), which are available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/30/09070101.htm.
[12] House of Lords, Select Committee on the Constitution, Relations between the executive, the judiciary and Parliament, (6th Report of Session 2006-2007) at [12].
[13] A copy is contained as Appendix 6 to the House of Lords, Constitutional Reform Bill – First Report (2003-2004 session), which is available here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldselect/ldcref/125/12502.htm.
[14] See, for instance, the detailed evidence annexed to the Judicature Commissioner’s 2nd Report, dated 1872.
[15] Lord Irvine, ibid at 8.
[16] See the House of Lords, Selection Committee on the Constitution, Session 2009-2010 evidence available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/30/09070101.htm.
[17] Tony Blair evidence at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/30/09070108.htm
[18] Lord Irvine, ibid at 3-4.
[19] Ibid at 4-5.
[20] Lord Falconer LC cited in House of Lords, Select Committee on the Constitution, Relations between the executive, the judiciary and Parliament, (6th Report of Session 2006-2007) at [14].
[21] Lord Falconer cited in J. Rozenberg, Constitutional reform – Lord Falconer looks back to legislation he introduced 20 years ago (8 May 2025), which is available on Substack.
[22] See G. Gee, R. Hazell, K. Malleson, P. O’Brien, The Politics of Judicial Independence in the UK’s Changing Constitution, (CUP, 2015) at 76-77.
[23] G. Gee et al at 70.
[24] The Concordat at [19]-[25].
[25] And with thanks to Dr John Sorabji for his assistance in the preparation of this lecture.