Smith, Bailey & Gunn on The Modern English Legal System

Textbook on the English Legal System

• Covers the institutions, personnel and procedures, and the handling of case law and statutes
• Details key legislative developments, including changes resulting from the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Courts Act 2003, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the Criminal Defence Service Act 2006, the Police and Justice Act 2006, the Tribunals, Court and Enforcement Act 2007, the Legal Services Bill 2007 and the Solicitor's Code of Conduct 2007
• Analyses key case law including landmark cases such as A v Secretary of State, Leeds City Council v Price, and R (Jackson) v Attorney General
• Covers other important developments such as the impact of the accession of a large number of countries joining the EU, the further consolidation of the Woolf Reforms, the growth in significance of ADR, the Law Society’s Training Framework Review, and continued pressures on publicly funded legal services
• Includes sample court forms, tables of essential statistics and flow charts illustrating the court structures

• Introduction
• Courts and tribunals
• Lawyers
• Judges
• Legislation
• Statutory interpretation
• Judicial precedent
• The Human Rights Act 1998

• Problems about problems
• Information and advice services

• Features of litigation and other methods of dispute resolution
• Pre-trial civil procedure
• Pre-hearing: tribunals
• Pre-trial criminal procedure

• The civil trial
• The tribunal hearing
• The criminal trial
• Appeals and judicial review