Talk:Courts of England and Wales

Expansion request
What are the differences between the three branches of the High Court? -- Beland 02:18, 14 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the difference is well explained in the High Court article. There is a link to it at the beginning of the Supreme Court section, should a further link be put under "High Court" as well? This article is already very big and I suggest that detail such as allocation between the divisions (not branches) be in the court specific article. Francis Davey 11:35, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Administrative Court
Deleted the paragraph - don't see that it is any different to the other specialist courts within the High Court. Cyclopaedic 13:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

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Libra case management system
Not sure where Libra fits in this article, but it is surely significant - a typically ghastly IT mess. Any suggestions for where it belongs in the cluster of relevant articles? Springnuts (talk) 06:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

review requested; it's easy probably
Please take a look at Costs (let such link load fully before starting to navigate, because that loading will jump you to the subsection at issue). The subsection at issue has several '[confirm]' tags, and your quick review could be very helpful. If a given assertion seems correct then you could just delete the '[confirm]' tag, and add no supporting source/footnote. Bo99 (talk) 22:44, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
 * One observation: the use of words like "claimant" and "defendant" as if they were names, as in "claimant filed a claim..." is not common among English lawyers. We would say "The claimant ..." or "a claimant". I'd suggest a reworking along those lines. Otherwise it looked reasonable, though Jackson is going to make all this more complicated. Francis Davey (talk) 14:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)


 * regarding your confirmation: Thank you very much.  At some point i will delete the '[confirm]' tags from the cited Costs section.
 * regarding the deletions of 'the': Yes, i agree with you that such deletions are not technically proper in generic English.  The upside of such deletions in the section at issue is that for most readers the section is very technical English and is long, and the deletions remove many words that might tend to impede readers' attention and comprehension.
 * for other readers, regarding the reference to Jackson: See e.g. Lord Justice Jackson.
 * Bo99 (talk) 16:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC) [update:  I just deleted the '[confirm]' tags from the cited Costs section, as promised in my posting above. Bo99 (talk) 02:14, 24 March 2013 (UTC)]


 * It's not wikipedia practice to write ungrammatical or incorrect language for the purposes of brevity. The section is not so long that it would not be useful to use the correct language. Francis Davey (talk) 09:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Ok, i added 'the' 17 times to the cited Costs section (to thank you again for having reviewed the substance). Bo99 (talk) 14:34, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Crown Court = Senior Court?
It's stated in the article that Crown Court is one of the senior courts of England and Wales, alongside High Court and the Court of Appeal. However, not only can I find nothing to back this up in the citations, but on page 20 of Learning Legal Rules by James Holland & Julain Webb, 8th edition (ISBN 9780199657490), only High Court & the Court of Appeal are named as the Senior Courts. Can anyone explain this discrepancy, or is this a mistake in the article? The Talking Toaster (talk) 11:17, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Section 1(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 provides that the Crown Court is one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales. James500 (talk) 16:58, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

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Restructuring
I'm undertaking a bit of a refactoring. This is the entry-point article for "how does the law work in england and wales", as such I feel it's important that a lay reader can quickly get an overview of the system as a whole. This article feels a bit like a grab bag of useful information, some of which is out of order. I suspect that long term it might be a few separate articles, e.g


 * English Criminal Law
 * English Civil Law
 * English Family Law

I'm not sure about the line between this article and English Law, I guess this page is procedural while English Law describes the reasoning process.

I suspect that I should sure up the new overview section with more sources people WP:OR it and try to delete it in it's entirety.

I'm doing some reordering so that details about specific courts go at the end

(Talpedia (talk) 01:53, 18 October 2016 (UTC))


 * Hi, this was a very good article - in the sense of being accurate and grammatically written. It also had a very clear focus: the court system, rather than procedural law in general. Yes, they interrelate but there is a distinction. I think it would have been useful for you to discuss this here (in talk) before making such major changes. Unfortunately, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a lot of what you have introduced is either ungrammatical or legally wrong. Given that we are not even sure if your new structure is the right one, I am not sure whether I want to go through and correct all the mistakes, if the material isn't going to stay there. I am not saying your structure is wrong, but it would have been good to ask here first. Francis Davey (talk) 10:30, 18 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Just to give some examples:


 * Criminal courts exist to deal with crimes not breaches of societal norms (there's an important difference between the two, well recognised by people doing research in the field).
 * Judgments are not enforced by the police.
 * There is no general right to appeal (often there is, but not always) and it is misleading to talk about "a court of appeal" in an article about a specific court system, because you throw the reader into a generally written article about courts of appeal world wide.
 * Some appellate courts are rarely if ever reported (eg the Crown Court in its appellate capacity). I realise you want to give generalisations, but there are ways of wording these things without saying something that is false. It is also doubtful (to me) whether a point about reporting really belongs here (perhaps a separate section or even article about the practice would be better).
 * Civil law (in the sense you use it) is not solely about ordering compensation, consider (say) the FTT (Property) - most cases do not involve such a thing.
 * We haven't had plaintiffs for many years.
 * This isn't an inaccuracy, but I think the potted sketch of civil procedure is so generic as not actually to be useful to a reader.
 * Missing is of course any hint of review.
 * Tribunals are no solely to do with administrative law. In fact some of the busiest tribunals deal almost exclusively with private law: FTT (Property) being one, Employment tribunals being an obvious other.
 * There is only one count court.


 * There's also plenty of grammar that is wrong. I am sure we will all correct it, but it would be useful to have buy-in for this approach from more editors. In particular, I am very sceptical that overviews of procedure are helpful and not really confusing. Francis Davey (talk) 10:41, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm a little negative about all the moaning... Let's be clear most of the content of the article hasn't really changed, apart from the addition of the leading section and the order. Sorry if there are a couple of grammar errors, they are pretty easy to fix and I imagine are mostly grammar typos. I mean if you want to completely revert the article and dump the introduction in the talk page feel free.

Your comments about the article being well written are perhaps a little inaccurate, perhaps you didn't look at the article before hand. It was a grab bag of various bits of procedural information sandwiched between random information about different courts, and links the main pages. I'd kind of assumed if no one was paying attention then I was allowed to make changes.

Anyway, I shall start addressing the points one at a time). Also to be borne in mind the extent to which most of this basic information was completely missing from Wikipedia...

(Talpedia (talk) 11:24, 18 October 2016 (UTC)) (Talpedia (talk) 11:47, 18 October 2016 (UTC)) typo fix

Okay, I shall pull the stuff on the procedure of the articles into a separate article. I'm sure people can start a delete request there! I think a combined overview of the functioning of the court system is an important thing to have. The procedural aspects of law are important.

For the purposes of moaning a little:


 * WP:BOLD, reverts are easy, most of this is new content not represented else where, and I feel that this content is worth having, if only of wikibooks, or lying on this talk page being approved.
 * The general response to asking questions, is silence, perhaps things are different here.
 * Umm, I suppose if people are going to get annoyed about edits they don't like... I could like fork them first, then submit them to be reviewed. It has the downside of slow feedback

Criminal courts exist to deal with crimes not breaches of societal norms (there's an important difference between the two, well recognised by people doing research in the field).

That's a little tautological isn't it. And crimes are societal norms that we have decided to legislate, apart form the ones that come from common law. Like sure that has the advantage of no one being able to interpret it as wrong. Useful when answering exam questions I suppose. I don't suspect the particular philosophical terminology used by people doing research in the field, as opposed the terminology used by people doing research in psychology or behavioural economics has that much value.

* Judgments are not enforced by the police.

Well not immediately, hence my reference to injunctions and contempt of court. I mean you eventually need someone to do the enforcing.

* Missing is of course any hint of review.

-1 points for politeness. That's what you're there for isn't it :P. I think you meant to say "Hmm, that's got a few typos. It's easy to get carried away when you're doing a lot of editing. Do you mind if I roll-back, and leave a copy here. Once you've fixed the typos it's easy enough to merge"? Trust me, if I'd done *no* reviewing it would have been a lot worse. But yeah, this proved a bigger task that expected, and I probably kind of fell of a bit at the end. Perhaps branch merge is the correct approach.

* There is no general right to appeal (often there is, but not always) and it is misleading to talk about "a court of appeal" in an article about a specific court system, because you throw the reader into a generally written article about courts of appeal world wide.

Did I say that there is a general right of appeal? Of course there is, the court just says no. Yep that link should be the english court of appeal.

* We haven't had plaintiffs for many years.

Yep, reasonable point. I knew the name was claimant in civil cases, but the point somehow slipped by mind.

* Tribunals are no solely to do with administrative law. In fact some of the busiest tribunals deal almost exclusively with private law: FTT (Property) being one, Employment tribunals being an obvious other.

I was probably mixing up administrative law, as in the law of administrative bodies with administrative law as in the law governing how administrative bodies act. I imagine some will say the latter is an incorrect way of saying things. Is there a phrase for the various internal rules of tribunals? Like say are used in employment tribunals.

* There is only one count court.

Ho ho ho. That could be a joke but I'm taking away another politeness point because of the earlier "hint of review" comment

* Tribunals are no solely to do with administrative law. In fact some of the busiest tribunals deal almost exclusively with private law: FTT (Property) being one, Employment tribunals being an obvious other.

Reasonable point I was using the phrase tribunal loosely

Hi, this was a very good article - in the sense of being accurate and grammatically written

Yet another politeness point lost. You won't have any left soon. Did you mean to say, "A valiant attempt, but I'm not sure I like the new article".

* Civil law (in the sense you use it) is not solely about ordering compensation, consider (say) the FTT (Property) - most cases do not involve such a thing.

I believe I included injunctions. Do you think FTT doesn't fall under this?

(Talpedia (talk) 13:05, 18 October 2016 (UTC))

Okay I've reverted to the previous version. Good as new. All it took was seven clicks, and no berating. Hurrah.

(Talpedia (talk) 13:14, 18 October 2016 (UTC))

I've dumped material related to the court system as a whole, rather than the individual courts here. I'm mostly just posting this link so as not to be deletionist. I haven't really done any editing here.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Talpedia/Court_system_of_England_And_Wales)

(Talpedia (talk) 13:48, 18 October 2016 (UTC))

Court of Protection
This is a senior court for issues arising from Mental Health Why isn't it included in this article? Jellinator (talk) 07:01, 30 July 2018 (UTC)