Law Weblog

The selection of judges is a fiasco…

Sunday 4 March 2007 at 11:36 am | In News | 2 Comments

In its first year, the new judicial selection process appears to be running into trouble, and the big question is have “secret soundings” found a back door?

In January 2007 the selection of 75 circuit judges had to be re-run because more than 200 candidates who were wrongly rejected. Senior judges, including the Lord Chief Justice made representations concerning applicants that the Judicial Appointments Commission had passed over. Extra interviews are needed to correct the “error”, which has been blamed on the initial sifting panels that simply looked at application forms and took no account of judicial references.

Some are suggesting that this has created an appearance that senior judges have leant on the Commission to make sure candidates they thought should have been selected are selected.

On top of that, this week it has been revealed that 21 judges of the Immigration Appeals Tribunal have been reappointed after their 5 year contracts were not renewed. They had started legal action for Judicial Review but got their jobs back before the case came to court.

Further concerns have been voiced because some appointees have been made from the Crown Prosecution Service, which as part of the executive should be kept separate from the judiciary.