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- Title
The office of Lord Chancellor: time to abandon the judicial role - the rest will follow.
- Authors
Woodhouse, Diana
- Abstract
This paper considers the viability of the office of Lord Chancellor. It focuses on the Lord Chancellor's judicial role and argues that a number of factors, most notably the dominance of his executive responsibilities, the political influence and style of the current incumbent, Lord Irvine, and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights through the Human Rights Act 1998, make its retention unsustainable. It therefore concludes that the Lord Chancellor should relinquish the role and no longer sit as judge. In the light of this conclusion, it moves on to look at the Lord Chancellor's responsibility for judicial appointments, his role as head of the judiciary, his position as a departmental minister in Cabinet and his function as Speaker in the House of Lords, and suggests that the nature of the office of Lord Chancellor is such that once the judicial role is relinquished, justifications for these other roles also disappear. The office should therefore be consigned to history, with other institutions assuming its responsibilities.
- Publication
Legal Studies, 2002, Vol 22, Issue 1, p128
- ISSN
0261-3875
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1748-121X.2002.tb00582.x