ABSTRACT
This chapter locates weaknesses in the process of legal reasoning as central importance and indeed as prior to any critical understanding of how judges work. Judges obviously occupy a central role in the legal system with regard to both civil and criminal law. If judges are simply the mouthpieces of the law and their decisions represent no more than the automatic outcome of strictly logical process of reasoning, then actual social situation and background of the judge is immaterial, for the decisions are contained in the law itself. The role of the jury in the English legal system is the subject of contentious debate. The jury in trial of the third appellant contained a person employed as a prosecuting solicitor by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The Court of Appeal rejected such arguments as spurious, holding that the expectations placed on ordinary citizens in relation to jury service had to be extended to members of the criminal justice system.
