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05 July 2018 / Steven Gasztowicz KC
Issue: 7800 / Categories: Features , In Court
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One court, one judiciary?

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Steven Gasztowicz QC considers the radical question of whether there could ever be ‘one civil court’ & ‘one judiciary’

  • Describes moves towards an integrated system of courts and tribunals

In 1988, when I was seven years’ call (heady days!) I sent a paper to Igor Judge QC, as he then was, who was the Leader of my circuit. It was in response to a talk he had given about the way in which the Bar had to adapt to modern times.

In my no doubt rather naïve paper, I suggested some basic parts of the legal system also needed straightening out, and that it was absurd for some cases to have to go to the county court and others to the High Court. I suggested it was even more absurd that, for example, a District Judge (then known as a ‘registrar’) was tied to only deciding particular matters in the county court and anything else had to go to a circuit judge, while the same individual sitting in the same room could

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