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Juries In Uk

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The judiciary is an independent arm of the government that ought to operate without influence or threats from the government or any other organization. The independence of the judiciary ensures it executes legal matters without bias and within the jurisdiction of the law. In England, sources of law include “legislation, common law, and European Union law” (Judiciary.gov.uk, 2016 n.d). Juries play significant roles in ensuring fair trials within the legal framework of the country’s constitution. Juries became an integral part of the judicial system as early as 1215 the same year that Magna Carta acknowledged the right to free trial through judgment by peers. Today, “lawyers invoke Magna Carta’s heritage in their briefs and summations in jury …show more content…

However, the age limit act was amended by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The act states that a person who serves on the jury must be between eighteen years old and seventy-five years old. This amendment increased the age limit in serving in the jury thus giving an opportunity to the majority of the citizens to participate in the service. Giving a small group of people the chance to the jury service while locking others outside received criticism from the members of the society who felt denied the chance to exercise their democratic rights. If the defendant pleads guilty, the jury service is not needed. In such a scenario, the judge has an easy time of giving a sentence as stipulated in the law. However, if the defendant pleads innocent, the jury service is required. The jury listens to the evidence and facts presented and makes decisions based on those facts while the judge makes decisions from the legal a perspective. Over the past years, there has been a heated debate on the significance of juries in petty cases. A senior court of appeal judge argued that juries should be abolished in trials of petty crimes (Rudgard, 2017). According to the judge’s arguments which were substantially true, she stated that an entire jury trial could cost a lot of money to listen to a petty trial and that would be wastage of public funds which could be channeled to other public sectors such as the education

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