Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Jury Trial or 'Swift Courts'? Backlogs, Legitimacy and the Proposed Shift to Judge-only Justice in England and Wales

Published on: 06 January 2026

Published by a LexisNexis Corporate Crime expert

Legal News

Article summary

Historical and constitutional foundations of jury trial

Clause 39 of Magna Carta [1215] stated that no free person could be jailed, deprived of possessions, or ruined ‘except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land’, planting the central principle that liberty cannot be removed without collective adjudication. Modern writers interpret this as the seed of the jury ideal—the phrase ‘of his peers’ maturing into the belief that grave criminal culpability should be assessed not solely by the Crown’s judiciary but by ordinary citizens. The jury is thus seen as the institutional heir to Magna Carta’s assurance that the King and his agents stand subject to the law. This ancestry underpins the view that limiting jury trial is not simply a procedural tweak but a possible intrusion upon a centuries‑old balance of authority between individual and state. As Lord Devlin memorably put it, trial by jury is ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives’. Blackstone likewise affirmed that ‘trial by jury ever has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law’...

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