ABSTRACT
The history of a typical judgment debt is a long alternating sequence of defaults and threats. Legal control rests on a court's ability to frighten an erring defendant into obedience. The simple signing of judgment is no guarantee that a debt will be paid. The law works because its will prevails. … Judgment is a declaration of war. The arsenal of enforcements provides the means to wage that war successfully.’ (Registrar of E court.) Similarly, the Final Report of the Evershed Committee (para. 399) observed that any system of enforcement must have a ‘method which is extremely unpleasant to the judgment debtor’. In their conduct of the war, solicitors in the London courts avail themselves of remarkably few types of enforcement. Although they are offered charging orders on property, garnishee orders, bankruptcy, executions and judgment summonses, they overwhelmingly resort to executions and judgment summonses alone.
