Description: Bringing together a mass of material from a wide variety of sources, this book provides the tools with which any observer of the English legal system can discover how it functions now, and the ideas and proposals for reform. The organisation of the courts, the problems of civil litigation, the correct balance between the citizen and the state in criminal cases, the role of the jury, the rules of evidence, the nature of the system of trial, the cost of legal proceedings and the legal aid scheme, and the legal profession itself are explored through cases, memoranda of government and private committees, and the fruits of empirical research. Editorial notes and questions highlight issues of particular significance. This seventh edition has been thoroughly revised and brought up to date. Since the last edition there have been a number of major developments, including the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, the abolition of the right to silence, the Government's Green Paper on legal aid, the Woolf Report on civil justice, the 1995 revision of the PACE Codes, the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the new disclosure rules under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Bill. The seventh edition also draws extensively on new research.

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