Legal changes

Helena Kennedy QC

BBC Radio 4's Law in Action was broadcast on Friday, 26 March, 2004 at 1600 GMT.

Since he started presenting the programme in 1988, Marcel Berlins has documented far-reaching changes in the legal system, from the incorporation into our law of the European Convention on Human Rights, to judicial review, to plans to scrap the automatic right to trial by jury, to annual criminal justice legislation.

Human Rights

Michael Zander QC, Emeritus Professor of Law at the London School of Economics argued that the most striking reform we have witnessed has been in the field of human rights.

"It's a new flexibility in the system that has enormous potential," he said. "There are lots of cases where the courts have pushed the boundaries. Over the next 20 years we'll see many more decisions which take the common law beyond where it would have been without the Human Rights Act."

Political parties have a Dutch auction as to who can be tougher. That has eroded our criminal justice system. Helena Kennedy QC

Edward Garnier QC MP argued though, that the courts were being no more radical in their application of the Act than they would have been anyway.

"I'm not sure that judges are doing anything more than they would have done under the old common law system," he said.

The new series of Law in Action will begin on Friday, 28 May, 2004.

Useful reading

Helena Kennedy, Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters To Us All, London (Chatto & Windus), 2004.

Michael Zander, A Matter of Justice: The Legal System in Ferment, Oxford (OUP Paperpacks), 1999.

Michael Zander, Law-making Process, London (Butterworths Law Paperback), 1990.

Michael Zander, Cases and Materials on the English Legal System, London (Butterworths Law Paperback), 2003.

Edward Garnier, QC MP contributor to Halsbury's Laws of England (4th ed.), Vol 45 'Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law' ; joint author of Bearing the Standard (1991); and Facing the Future (1993).