This edition of an established text provides a concise and up-to-date introduction to the English legal system. Both law students and students on vocational courses will welcome it as a highly readable and stimulating overview of the subject.

This edition of an established text provides a concise introduction to the English legal system. Both law students and students on vocational courses may welcome it as a highly readable and stimulating overview of the subject. Building on the strengths of previous editions, the text has been substantially updated to include: Civil Procedure rules 1998-1999; an evaluation of Woolf Reforms in practice; the restructuring of the civil appeal structure in 1999-2000; the remodelling of the delivery of legal services 1998-2002; demolition of civil and criminal legal aid and replacement with the Community Legal Service and the Criminal Defence Service; the implementation of the Access to Justice Act 1999 and ancillary policy changes; further demolition of lawyers' restrictive practices and monopolies under the Access to Justice Act 1999 and surrounding debate; the Crime and Disorder Act 1998; the Narey reforms, speeding up criminal justice; the creation of the Narey Courts, changes to the Youth Courts; enhanced powers for single justices and for magistrates' clerks; the creation of a unified stipendiary bench of district judge.

Part of a series tailored to students' requirements by experienced teachers, this guide covers aspects of the English legal system, including institutions, sources, personnel, the adversarial process, access to justice, and tips, model questions and answer guides for tackling examinations.

The public image of judges has been stuck in a time warp; they are invariably depicted in the media - and derided in public bars up and down the country - as 'privately educated Oxbridge types', usually 'out-of-touch', and more often than not as 'old men'. These and other stereotypes - the judge as a pervert, the judge as a right-wing monster - have dogged the judiciary long since any of them ceased to have any basis in fact. Indeed the limited research that was permitted in the 1960s and 1970s tended to reinforce several of these stereotypes. Moreover, occasional high profile incidents in the courts, elaborated with the help of satirists such as 'Private Eye' and 'Monty Python', have ensured that the 'old white Tory judge' caricature not only survives but has come to be viewed as incontestable. Since the late 1980s the judiciary has changed, largely as a result of the introduction of training and new and more transparent methods of recruitment and appointment. But how much has it changed, and what are the courts like after decades of judicial reform? Given unprecedented access to the whole range of courts - from magistrates' courts to the Supreme Court - Penny Darbyshire spent seven years researching the judges, accompanying them in their daily work, listening to their conversations, observing their handling of cases and the people who come before them, and asking them frank and searching questions about their lives, careers and ambitions. What emerges is without doubt the most revealing and compelling picture of the modern judiciary in England and Wales ever seen. From it we learn that not only do the old stereotypes not hold, but that modern 'baby boomer' judges are more representative of the people they serve and that the reforms are working. But this new book also gives an unvarnished glimpse of the modern courtroom which shows a legal system under stress, lacking resources but facing an ever-increasing caseload. This book will be essential reading for anyone wishing to know about the experience of modern judging, the education, training and professional lives of judges, and the current state of the courts and judiciary in England and Wales.

'The English Legal System' provides a lively and approachable introduction for those new to the study of law. It presents the main areas of the English legal system and invites students to critique the wider aspects of how law is made and reformed.

An inter-disciplinary, international collection that examines the mutual influences between law and culture through a series of sophisticated case studies showing how cultural phenomena are brought under legal regulation, how laws are resisted through cultural practices, and how those practices shape the way in which law is understood and applied.