Statute Law Repeals - Law Commission - Ministry of Justice

PART 5
LOCAL COURTS AND ADMINISTRATION OF
JUSTICE
INTRODUCTION
5.1 This section of the report proposes the repeal of 25 Acts (two in part only) relating
to court houses and judges’ lodgings sited in various counties in the United
Kingdom and Ireland. Most of the Acts recited here had only local application.
Additionally - as part of the wider administration of justice theme - repeals are
proposed for a small number of Acts dealing with qualification of solicitors and
application for appointment to the rank of Queen’s Counsel. The individuals and
organisations consulted about these proposals are set out in Appendix 3.
LOCAL COURTS
5.2 The courts Acts fall broadly into two categories:
(1) those statutes which authorised the construction of court houses
or judges’ lodgings and subsequently became spent or otherwise
obsolete because their purpose had been fulfilled (for example,
because the buildings had been built, or they had ceased to be
needed for their original use);
(2) statutes extending the jurisdiction of local courts of requests
which operated in one guise or another for small debt matters
from 1483 through to 1846 (at which point their jurisdiction was
taken over by the new county courts). 1
1 Fuller background on each of the statutes discussed in this part is to be found in the Law
Commission’s Statute Law Repeals Consultation Paper: Courts and Administration of
Justice (SLR 04/09) published in October 2009 and available on the Law Commission’s
website.
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