The United Kingdom’s justice secretary, David Lammy, is limiting people’s right to a trial by jury in England and Wales.
Under proposals he outlined in parliament on Tuesday, only defendants accused of rape, murder or manslaughter, or cases
meeting a defined “public-interest” test, will undergo a jury trial.
Reforms to the justice system include creating a new tier of “swift courts” as part of a plan to tackle unprecedented
delays in the court system. New jury-free courts will take on many of the cases normally heard by juries at Crown
Courts, which cover serious crimes.
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The upshot is that jury trials for defendants facing relatively short custodial sentences – those of up to three years –
will be scrapped in England and Wales. The reforms will not extend to Scotland, which has its own legal system, or
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice reported that more than 78,000 Crown Court cases remain unresolved, a record
number. Eliminating the jury aspect of a trial saves about 20 percent of the time of a trial, the government claims.
What is the government proposing?
Under the reforms announced on Tuesday, criminal cases which carry sentences of up to three years, as well as complex
fraud and financial cases, will be tried without juries. Serious offences, including rape, murder and manslaughter, will
remain subject to jury trial.
Also under the reforms, the government will set aside 550 million pounds ($726m) for victim support services over the
next three years. This will fund support for survivors and witnesses as they move through the justice system,
counselling and guidance.
A Justice Ministry memo, which was circulated around Whitehall last week, had seemed to suggest Lammy would go further
than he has announced by allowing jury trials for “public interest” cases with potential prison sentences of over five
However, it is understood that following backlash from members of the Cabinet and legal figures, he has watered down his
Regardless, they represent a change from Lammy’s views in the past. In a social media post five years ago, he wrote,
“Trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.”
The shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, accused Lammy of “scrapping the institution he once lauded”.
Why is Lammy announcing these changes now?
The reforms follow the results of a review of criminal courts by former judge Sir Brian Leveson in July. The government
commissioned that review because of a significant backlog of criminal cases which had developed.
Justice Ministry figures show that the open criminal caseload was 78,329 at the end of June, 10 percent higher than the
year before. The median length of cases has also increased by 10 percent – from 153 to 168 days – since 2024.
This backlog was caused primarily by two things: delays backed up from the COVID-19 pandemic, and years of
underinvestment in the courts.
Leveson advised the government to end jury trials for some serious offences, which could be conducted instead by one
judge or with two sitting magistrates without compromising “the right to a fair trial”.
Lammy had described the backlog as a “courts emergency” and warned that the backlog could rise to 100,000 by 2028 if it
Announcing his criminal court reform in the Commons, he said, “I will create new swift courts within the crown court
with a judge alone deciding verdicts in trial of either way cases with a likely sentence of three years or less as Sir
Brian [Leveson] recommends.”
What are the criticisms of these proposals?
The right of defendants to a trial by jury has long been a central part of the English justice system.
In advance of Lammy’s announcement, Mark Evans, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, which represents
thousands of solicitors, told The Guardian newspaper that the proposals were an “extreme measure” that go “far beyond”
Leveson’s recommendations.
“This is a fundamental change to how our criminal justice system operates and it goes too far. Our society’s concept of
justice rests heavily on lay participation in determining a person’s guilt or innocence,” he said. “Lay participation”
refers to people who are not legally trained and pertains to the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers.
Riel Karmy-Jones, a criminal solicitor, told the BBC that the new proposals would not fix the backlog, which she blamed
on decades of underfunding in the UK’s legal system.
She added that introducing an “untested layer of complexity” by removing juries would undermine the justice system.
Following the announcement in parliament, Abigail Ashford, a solicitor advocate, told the BBC: “Judge-only trials risk
deepening existing inequalities and eroding confidence among communities who already feel marginalised.
“In complex or sensitive cases, removing the community from assessing credibility and fairness undermines trust in a way
that cannot be compensated for by concentrating decisions in the hands of a single judge.”
A survey of Criminal Bar Association members found 88.5 percent are opposed to the creation of new “swift courts”.
What is the English history of jury trials?
The concept behind jury trials can be traced to the Magna Carta of 1215, which laid the foundations for parliamentary
power. It stated that no free man could be punished “except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the
While this clause did not immediately lead to the establishment of juries as they are today, it cemented the idea that
state power should be constrained and that local communities – the general populace, rather than just those with legal
training – should play a role in trials.
By the end of the English Civil War around 1660, the independence of juries had become a key safeguard against arbitrary
rule. The Bushel’s Case of 1670 cemented this by ruling that jurors could not be punished for their verdicts,
establishing the principle of jury autonomy.
The English Bill of Rights in 1689 further entrenched the right of defendants to trial by jury, particularly in criminal
matters, as a safeguard against interference or abuses by the King. Juries became symbols of both community
participation and protection from state overreach.
As the British Empire expanded, the jury system travelled with it, influencing judicial systems in the United States,
Canada, Australia, India and parts of Africa and the Caribbean. As such, the British model remains one of the most
influential templates for due process around the world.
Have any other countries scrapped jury trials?
In 1941, the Vichy regime under World War II German occupation in France replaced traditional juries with cours
d’assises, courts composed mainly of judges. That system has been largely retained since then. Advocates claim it
produces predictable verdicts, but critics say it has weakened the public role in administering justice.
Some parts of the former British Empire have retreated from traditional jury trials since their introduction by the
India abolished virtually all jury-led trials for criminal cases following a notorious murder trial in 1959, during
which intense media pressure and perceived jury bias led to the controversial acquittal of Kawas Manekshaw Nanavati.
Singapore phased out juries between the 1960s and 1970s, arguing that a small, multilingual population made
representative juries unreliable. Officials also claimed that complex commercial cases were too much for untrained
people on juries to take on and required specialist judges.
Malaysia followed a similar path, abolishing jury trials in 1995. Officials pointed to the persistent difficulty of
“empanelling” truly impartial jurors – a process that involves identifying, selecting and formally appointing citizens