[Lord-Voldemort]

Non-legally trained volunteers essentially ruling on whether they believe a person is guilty or not guilty?

[Scumbaggio]

what is your alternative?

[zKlown]

(Original post by Lord-Voldemort)
Non-legally trained volunteers essentially ruling on whether they believe a person is guilty or not guilty?

It's meant to be about giving members of society the chance to judge a person's guilt. Magistrates are meant to represent society's views on what is acceptable and what is not.

The same with juries. Most judicial decisions, the verdict is delivered by non-legally qualified parties. Or so it seems...

[Lord-Voldemort]

(Original post by zKlown)
It's meant to be about giving members of society the chance to judge a person's guilt. Magistrates are meant to represent society's views on what is acceptable and what is not.

The same with juries. Most judicial decisions, the verdict is delivered by non-legally qualified parties. Or so it seems...

But do Magistrates really represent society? Or do their own views, potentially extreme, get in the way?

[zKlown]

(Original post by Lord-Voldemort)
But do Magistrates really represent society? Or do their own views, potentially extreme, get in the way?

Nah they probably don't, I didn't say it was a perfect system. They're meant to represent society's views, however yes, sometimes their own opinions/views get in the way of that.

But the same goes for everything, politicians are meant to be people who represent the public, given they're "democratically" elected...

[jackclarke1995]

(Original post by Lord-Voldemort)
But do Magistrates really represent society? Or do their own views, potentially extreme, get in the way?

Yes, you're right. Magistrates still remain predominantly middle class.
However, they provide knowledge that a judge may nbot have, they involve the public in the system, and are also considerably cheaper. Magistrates are not payed whereas a district judge, which is the alternative, would have a salary upwards of £90000. There is also a lack of available judges to fill the role that magistrates have.

[IShouldBeStudying]

I think I agree with the Magistrate system purely because they're not legally trained. Judges attend prestigious law schools, go on to do additional - and just as prestigious - postgraduate degrees, work for a time and then get the call to go on and sit on the bench.

Judges tend to come from a specific background, have very similar educations and have the same kind of experiences. While this is good to assure homogenous rulings across the board, it doesn't always work out like this and what you essentially end up with is a group of people from very privilidged backgrounds holding positions of extreme power. It might be true that Magistrates tend to come from middle class backgrounds, but what backgrounds do Judges come from?

The Magistrate system isn't perfect. It is skewed towards members of the middle class accepting positions. However, it is unique in the fact that it doesn't require any legal training as the cases aren't based in jurisprudence; they're based in fairness. Allowing members of the public to rule in petty cases on whether or not something was right or not is a great use of the people, keeps the court system from being tied up and allows a more even distribution of power across the board.

[L i b]

It tends to give elderly upper-middle class busybodies something to do with their time, a bit like being Lord Lieutenant of the county or something. As such, I'm generally supportive.