Student Resources - Chapter fourteen
- Chapter Summary
- Matching Exercise
- Further reading
- Internet links
- Multiple Choice Quiz
- Worksheet Crossword
Chapter 14: The Judiciary
SETTING THE SCENE
Two of the three powers at the heart of the political system – the executive and the legislature – have already been dealt with. We now turn to the third major aspect of the state: the judiciary. Alone of the three powers, the judiciary is unelected and consists of legal experts whose only qualification to judge us is in their training and experience. Do they have more power than they deserve in light of their unelected status? Or is the fact that they are not elected our best guarantee that they do their job properly and that they protect our rights from the encroachments of the other two branches of government?
KEY TOPICS
- What is the judiciary?
- Judicial independence
- Judicial neutrality
- Rights and the redress of grievances
Are any of the terms below unclear to you? If so, perhaps you should look over this chapter or use the searchable glossary to familiarise yourself with these terms.
- The judiciary
- Justices of the Peace
- The Court of Appeal
- The Supreme Court
- The European Court of Justice
- The law
- Judicial independence
- The Lord Chancellor
- Judicial neutrality
- Civil rights
- Natural rights
- Positive rights
Matching Exercise: Chapter Fourteen
| The judiciary | The administrative branch of a political system |
| Justices of the Peace | Unelected body of professional administrators or bureaucrats. |
| The Court of Appeal | The highest court in the land, which consists of the judicial committee of the House of Lords. |
| The Supreme Court | The administrative branch of a political system |
| The European Court of Justice | The third branch of government, which deals with judging, the law and the law courts. |
| The law | Unelected body of professional administrators or bureaucrats. |
| Judicial independence | The third branch of government, which deals with judging, the law and the law courts. |
| The Lord Chancellor | The highest court in the land, which consists of the judicial committee of the House of Lords. |
| Judicial neutrality | The absence of bias in the judiciary religious, social, gender, sexual, political or racial bias, for example. |
| Civil rights | Special freedoms which citizens of a country enjoy and which are protected by the law. |
| Natural rights | A universal right inherent in the nature of human beings, and not contingent on ethics, human constructs, laws or beliefs. |
| Positive rights | A right specifically created by the government or society, for the benefit of its members. |
Further reading for Chapter Fourteen
K. D. Ewing and C. A. Gearty, Freedom under Thatcher (Clarendon, 1990): illustrates well the starting point for Labour’s reforms of the judiciary.
J. A. G. Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary (Fontana, 1997): still worth looking at – the classic left-wing critique of the judiciary.
H. Kennedy, Eve was Framed (Chatto and Windus, 1992): a further attack on the judicial system from a modern feminist perspective.
S. Lee, Judging Judges (Faber and Faber, 1988): a reply to Griffiths.
Websites
- www.humanrights.gov.uk (Government’s Human Rights Unit)
- www.lcd.gov.uk (Lord Chancellor’s Department)
Multiple Choice Quiz 14
Click here to access the Multiple Choice Quiz for this Chapter.
Worksheet - Crossword
Click here to download the Worksheet
