Politics of Judicial Independence in the UK's Changing Constitution

About this book

"This book is the product of a three-year research project carried out between 2011 and 2013, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/H039554/1). The project set out to explore the implications for judicial independence and judicial accountability of the profound constitutional changes which have taken place in the UK in recent years. To enable us to understand the full impact of those changes, which are still working their way through the system, we interviewed over 150 people. These included judges, government ministers, parliamentarians, senior civil servants in the Ministry of Justice and other parts of Whitehall, officials in Parliament, the Courts Service and the Judicial Appointments Commission, plus a similar range of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Most of the interviews were carried out on the basis of anonymity and so we cannot name them here; but we are immensely grateful to them for their time and trouble, and for subsequently commenting on our chapters in draft. One person we can name is Lord Judge, who as Lord Chief Justice generously gave us a great deal of his time and encouraged his colleagues to do likewise"--