No Case to Answer
| DOI | 10.1177/002201836202600310 |
| Published date | 01 July 1962 |
| Date | 01 July 1962 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
No
Case
To
Answer
BY PROFESSOR J. A.
COUTTS
Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Bristol
FROM time to time, some at least of
Her
Majesty's judges
feel constrained to express their distrust of
the
part played
in the administration of justice by laymen, whether those lay-
men
be jurors or justices. Nowadays, for instance, the members
of
the
Court of Appeal appear to be more ready than were their
predecessors of a generation ago to declare unreasonable
the
verdict of a
jury
in a civil case.
It
may be that, with the virtual
disappearance of the
jury
in civil proceedings, the judges have
more experience in deciding for themselves issues of pure fact
and
in consequence are emboldened to substitute their own
practised
judgment
for that of the unpractised jurymen, on
those few occasions on which juries are still employed in civil
litigation.
Asimilar distrust of
the
jury
in criminal cases manifests
itself from time to time. Perhaps this distrust of
the
"lay
gents" was voiced most clearly, in recent years, by
Lord
Goddard, C.J., in R. v. Summers',
In
that
case, the
Lord
Chief
Justice was of opinion that juries were acquitting too many
persons accused of crime and
that
this was due, to some extent,
at least, to
the
fact
that
juries were charged in the
"time-
honoured formula" which required them to ask the prosecution
for proof beyond reasonable doubt.
This
mention of
doubt
merely suggested doubts to them.
It
was, therefore, suggested
by the Court
that
in future the
jury
should be told
that
they
should be "satisfied
that
they were
sure"
or that they should
"feel
sure"
or
that
they should be "certain that they were
sure".
The
result of this ill-starred attempt to meddle with
the
"time-honoured formula" was that three years later, in R. v.
Murtagh &Kennedy, one accused had his conviction of
1
Variously
reported:
see (1952) 36 Cr. App. Rep. 14; [1952] 1
All
E.R. 1059;
[1952] 1
T.L.R.
II64;
cf. 68
L.Q.R.
314.
23°
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