Wednesday, February 2 ---
--- Today’s big fieldtrip is to the Inns of Court, the law offices for the London legal system. These are such titled because, back in the day, poor law students (are there any other kind?) used to sleep at these buildings, due both to lack of funds and lack of free time.
The road these buildings are on used to be a major thoroughfare on the south bank of the Thames, and so it was frequented by the richest businessmen and aristocrats in town, the same people who happened to stop in and become clients of these firms, and that is why this part of town became (and remains) the legal sector of town.
Each separate Inn doesn’t specialize in a specific type of law, but rather a special region of the country, usually. They’re mainly different social clubs -- some represent people from the North, so many who enjoy that part of town flock to this Inn. Some represent farmers, and so people with a weak spot in their heart for the tillers of the land often go there. Etc., etc., etc. They’re more like specialized country clubs based on your interest rather than cornerstones of different types of law.
We go into one of the Inns and enter their cafeteria, a wonderful room that has dark wooden paneling, great, long tables of finely polished oak, the crests of the beneficiaries and founders of the Inn plastered down the walls, five huge paintings of different royals hanging at one end, and an absolutely amazing ceiling skying above. It’s called a double hammer-beam ceiling that is carved completely out of oak -- I can’t properly describe the shape, so you’ll have to wait to see it in pictures, but it looks a little like three increasingly-large, upside-down Us -- but the real kicker is that they carved the whole thing while it was up on the ceiling, not piece by piece and then assembling it at the end. (And when you see this, there are some rather ornate little pieces, which just add to the marvel.)
The building this was in was hit rather badly during the Blitz of WWII, but amazingly, the ceiling remained undisturbed. (They’ve got a photo on the wall that shows two of the walls completely bombed out, the room in shambles, and the ceiling hovering gently over the rubble, completely unscathed. Ahh, that strange lady called Luck...)
Our guide tells us that the people who proliferate in this building, while obviously lawyers, fall into one of two categories: solicitors and barristers. Solicitors are the lawyers who do all the pre-trial work. They dish out advice, devise strategies, etc. The barristers, on the other hand, are the ones who do the work during a trial. They’re the ones who actually go into the courtrooms, representing a person and arguing for them in front of a judge (and yes, they’re the ones who wear the funny wigs. More on those later.) A third, more modern type is the solicitor advocate who is somewhat of a combination of both, but is still rather rare (a surprise, knowing how much the Brits love change...)
Training to become a barrister is rather rigorous, their pupilage lasting 12 months (this is akin to an internship in the US). If, after this time, the people in the Inn agree to take the student on full time, they are barristers for life. But, if there is even one objection from the Inn’s members (roughly 45-100 people make up an Inn), you’re out. If for some reason you don’t make it, (and don’t feel bad, roughly 2600 people apply to become barristers each year, but only 5-600 actually get accepted) because many end up becoming lawyers for banks or try to make the leap to government. (That’s funny, sounds like our system where all of society’s failures flock into government positions...)
And if you are one of the lucky ones to get into the Inn, don’t count on making the big bucks like Johnny Cochrane. Most new barristers don’t make much money (more than 10% make less than 10,000 pounds a year, or the equivalent of $17,000!), with it usually taking roughly 10 years to make money. (A sharp contrast to the trial lawyers in our country, huh? They make that amount in an hour...)
Now, back to the wigs -- the wigs have been worn for 300 years, both by barristers and judges, and were originally made from human hair. Thus, they were extremely heavy and required constant attention and powdering to keep them looking fresh and proper. Humphrey Ravenscroft came up with the idea in 1834 to change them to the lighter, more easily maintained horse hair that is used today, and now they can be used for 100 years without ever needing attention, concievably. The wigs can also only be worn in the courtroom, and there are stiff punishments for wearing them outside, so you see all sorts of these men walking around town carrying these ratty looking balls of curls on a busy street. Kinda funny.
After this we head to the chapel of the Inn we’ve been looking at (each Inn has their own chapel, own cafeteria, etc. They’re really hesitant to consort with the enemy, apparently...) It’s a lovely little church, complete with the high, arching, circular rotunda and ornate wooden pulpits I’ve come to expect. It also has something a little different, though. This church is built in the collegiate fashion where the pews in the middle face each other and not the altar at the front. (This is apparently the style used in many monasteries.) So, the people during the service all have to crane their necks to the side to see the front of the church and the happenings there (I bet this is real comfortable when the pastor gets a little long-winded, eh?).
It was built this way so that no one was shown favoritism by getting to sit in the front row, but it hasn’t really changed anything -- the people who sit closest to the altar still have the best seats because they don’t have to turn their heads as much. It’s actually worse for the people sitting in the back now because, instead of just having to strain your eyes to see what’s going on, now you have to strain your neck by turning it drastically to the side. I swear -- there are some really enlightened people setting up organized religion...
Next off we head to the Royal Courts of Justice, the place where the actual courtrooms are. It’s a beautiful building, inside and out, but you aren’t allowed to take cameras into the place, so I can’t snap any pictures. (Apparently they were absolutely aghast at being able to watch the OJ trial on TV. They thought it was a complete corruption of justice (they needed the cameras to figure out our system is more crooked than the stripe on Charlie Brown’s shirt?) Wait ‘til I explain their system a little later -- then you’ll see something to be aghast at...)
The Royal Courts were opened by Queen Victoria in 1882 and have been the home of the Supreme Court ever since. It’s a mammoth building, housing over 1000 rooms and over 3.5 miles worth of corridors in the main building alone. It cost a million and a half pounds (about $2.5 million) to make and sits on six acres of land.
The Supreme Court housed within is divided into two parts: the High Court and the Court of Appeals. In the High Court there are three subdivisions: the Queen’s Bench, the Chancery, and the Family divisions. The Queen’s Bench hears matters of minor civil actions and various things the other two do not cover (how’s that for vague?). The Chancery covers trials dealing with mortgages, deeds, contracts, bankruptcy, etc. And the Family division deals with all matrimonial proceedings and those relating to children.
For all civil disputes, the structure goes like this: for all cases involving sums less than 50,000 pounds ($75,000), they are heard in the local county courts. For all trials above this sum, they are heard in one of the three aforementioned branches of the High Court where one judge will sit in on the case. After judgement is passed here, the next step leads to the Court of Appeal where three judges hear the case and make a decision (roughly 800 cases make it here a year). If you don’t like the verdict here, you can go to the tip of the iceberg, the House of Lords, to plead your case, but only 70-80 cases make it here each year. (A person can bypass the Court of Appeal and go straight to the House of Lords only if all parties consent and there is some precedent to do so). Finally, if you don’t like what the old coots here have to say, you have one option left -- you can take it to the European Court, but it must have some European aspect to it (either in content or precedent) and it’s very costly, and thus extremely rare.
On the criminal side, first your case starts out in the Magistrate’s Court. This covers things like drunk driving, burglary, license violations, etc. and is heard without a jury. The kicker (remember what I said about being aghast? Get ready...) is that the people who hear these cases aren’t legally trained. They’re not judges, they’re not lawyers, they have little to no legal experience. They’re just people who volunteer (roughly 30,000 fill the Magistrate’s right now) to dish out justice. So basically, your drunk driving trial could be heard by Bernie the local Prohibition promoter, or your sexual improprieties can be ruled on by Maggie the local Nun recruiter and her habit-heavy hens, and they get to decide your fate. And if this wasn’t bad enough, this portion of the courts handles NINETY-EIGHT percent of the cases! (Pick your jaw up from the floor and keep reading, damnit...)
Next up the ladder is the Crown Court, which hears the more major offenses or the appeals from the Magistrate’s Court (and I don’t see why you’d ever need to appeal one of those decisions...). These cases are heard by a jury, and once a verdict is passed, appeals can be heard by the Queen’s Bench, then the Court of Appeal, and then the House of Lords (and then the Euro Court, again, but the same restrictions apply as for the civil cases.)
Now, to give you a more rounded explanation of the English legal system, we’ll start with their Constitution -- they don’t have one. There is no written document like ours, just a bunch of ‘freedoms’ the people are said to have. (We have ‘rights,’ a whole Bill full of them, while they have ‘freedoms.’) The people are free to do anything not barred by law, but the thing is that these freedoms are constantly being trimmed down. Our system has a basic set of rights that were developed over the years and are protected at all costs and almost never removed, just modified, and sometimes even added to.
Here, though, they started with a huge clean slate full of freedoms -- you could do whatever you wanted when they first formed this country-- but over the years the government’s laws and verdicts have slowly taken them away, so it’s almost an inverted system -- we started with nothing and have slowly accumulated more and more, whereas they started with everything and slowly lost it (sounds like their Empire, doesn’t it?)
Another interesting difference between the two systems is that Americans have the right not to say anything and not be judged on their omission of speaking, only on what is actually said or proved. Here, though, the jury can pass judgement on what you say as well as what you don’t say. “He’s not defending himself. That seems fishy to me. I think he’s guilty...”) (So basically, Mark Furhman would be frying right now if he was in the UK, as would OJ. Makes you wish for advantageous extradition policies, huh? “We’re not going to get anything if we try him here. Let’s ship him off to Japan. They’ve got a castration policy for people who piss in public. That’ll learn ‘em...”)
Try this one: In our country, the Supreme Court protects people and can strike down a law by deeming it unconstitutional, but here, if a law gets passed, it’s almost impossible to get rid of it. (Those stodgy old buggers in the House of Lords and the Royal Family don’t like to be second guessed.)
Enough of the differences -- both the UK and the US have common law systems, which means the judgements are based on precedent, not personal bias (in theory, at least), a system that originated here in the UK. It is based on cases, and its law is like a web that is infinitely interconnected and is constantly expanding. The judges are very important to this process because their decisions further the law and add another string / connection to the web. This style is opposed to a civil system of law that occurs in Germany, France, Spain, etc., one that is based on government-induced codes.
Despite sharing a common system of common law, there are subtle differences between the two countries. For example, here the judges were originally lawyers, but they’re appointed by a secret process that no one outside the courts really seems to understand (I know it SOUNDS a lot like ours, but trust me, it’s not.) Also, the judges in the UK tend to create law more in the name of fairness than in strict adherence to precedent. What they like to do is reason backwards -- they come to a decision they like, and then they work backwards to justify it (the complete opposite of what happens in our country. Right?...)
Another difference is in the system of jury selection (and in jury decision-making, but we already covered that). 150 people are notified that they have to serve, and, like in our country, only 30-40 actually show up (“my dog was in labor! I swear, Officer...”) Of these who show up, 12 are picked via a random ballot (this disallows any picking or jury stacking that happens so frequently in our country. You aren’t likely to get juries stacked by race, sex, age, gender, etc. here. (So, if this would have happened in our country for the OJ trial, the Juice could have been faced with an all-white jury or middle aged women, if the Fates were against him. Sounds like a much fairer system in this regard, I think. That way, if you really did the crime, you can look forward to doing the time instead of getting off because you starred in movies and could afford really expensive, silver-tongued lawyers (and because you had fat, glove-repelling hands))
One final difference between our two systems -- here, plea bargaining is an exception, not the rule as in the US. Despite how long it takes and the backlog it creates in the system, they like to go to full trial (I would too if I was a poor barrister who dropped several hundred pounds on a silly horse-hair wig, yet who can’t afford to buy a McKroket at McDonald’s)
All that learning taking its toll on my brain, I retreat to the flat for some dinner and then head out to the theatre (Wednesday is theatre day, baby!) Tonight it’s Saturday Night Fever. Wow! It’s chock full of some really fun dance steps and tons of great songs, and this easily compensates for the somewhat weak storyline. I have so much fun at this, carefully selecting several new moves to bust on the dance floor, that I hold an impromptu dance party at the Tube station, which just happens to carry over to the Tube itself. Sure, the other passengers were staring at me, (and they were gawking at my dancing, too) but who cares? I had just put on, “mah mah mah mah mah boogie shoes! WEEE WAAA! duh duh duh, WEEE WAAA!” Pumped from the great time at the show, I try to sleep after prying off my dancing tappers.
Thursday, Feb. 3 ---
--- The day started out like any other. Had to get up, brave the crowds on the Tube, and get to work to be greeted by the same frustrating inanity as any other day. I troll around the web, find some story ideas, write them up, and have them promptly dismissed as “not really Diary style.” Fine. This forces me to up the frequency of my bathroom breaks and trips to the water fountain, effortlessly tiding me over until lunch time when I can flee to the comforts of St. Paul’s shadow or the bank of the Thames, my two favorite haunts for the lunch hour.
Trouble arises when, on one of my trips back from the washroom, I make the fatal mistake of making direct eye contact with one of my coworkers who promptly decides this is an invitation to talk to me, give me advice, or orders. Actually, this time it’s a frightening mandate of another kind -- they want to take me out to lunch to celebrate my starting work here. Agh. I try to squirm out of it -- “I have to run a couple of errands. I was going to stop by the astrophysics lab to help the doctoral students on their theses and then run over to the senior citizen center to tell a couple of fairy tales to the old folks while they eat.”
No dice. “You can’t not come, we’re holding it in your honor!”
“Um, thanks and all, but maybe you could throw it for Michael? He always is neglected. Don’t you see him crying all the time? He says it’s just because he’s so upset about the horrible plight of the Albanian water yak, but that excuse is as believable as a lawyer when he says, ‘Trust me.’ He’s worked here for fifty years. Maybe he should be the guest of honor.”
“Nice try. You’re the special boy today, little Timmy! (What the hell am I, five?) We’re going to have cake and play games and maybe, if you’re lucky, we can play pin the tail on the Yankee -- I mean, donkey!” (OK, maybe I took a few liberties there, but I have to make this readable.)
So around 1 o’clock, when I should be heading off to sit with St. Paul, I’m instead on my way to an unnecessarily high-priced restaurant with a bunch of British people who I’m still not all that comfortable around. Alas, my only other option is to feign a heart attack and collapse on the sidewalk, but that little whelp Martin from accounting already took that one after I let him in on my plans. The backstabbing bastard even has the gall to wink and wave at me as they carry him away while we trudge ever onward. Jerk.
We finally arrive at the place of culinary consumption, an interesting looking place called Fish! (punctuation not added), which gets me a little excited. There’s nothing I like better than seafood. We sit down, chew the fat (or they do; I kinda sit there trying to jump in on their conversations, but all I keep hearing are words like “naff” and “swiffy” and the likes, so I make like Depeche Mode and enjoy the silence.)
Eventually we order some appetizers (I get the crab toast concoction, which for the low, low price of 5 pounds is a golf ball sized pile of crab meat, a quarter-sized piece of toast, and a piece of parsley, which compared with the sizes of the other two items, looks like it could block out the sun in their universe.
After this filling snack (I try to act like I’m too full to continue and skip out early, but to no avail. They’re on to my wriggling tactics...) we order the meal, and they order me a pint of beer. This, as it turns out, is a great idea. By the time I’m finished with my tasty (yet characteristically small) swordfish, they’ve already ordered me two more, and by the time dessert comes, I’m well into my fourth pint. Now those of you who know me understand that I’m not the biggest drinker in the world, and I certainly don’t drink during the day except for an occasional weekend in the summer, so I’m well on my way to getting drunk. This, apparently, is their goal, both for me and themselves, and the whole table is getting a little rosier in the cheeks (we make Santa Claus and his cheeks look like those of an Irish shut-in) as the meal wears on.
By the time dessert gets here (I have the sticky toffee pudding -- a little sponge cake covered with hot toffee sauce, and I also sample the bread and butter pudding -- more spongy bread-butter cake covered in warm custard, both very good) I’m setting up camp in the quaint little town of Intoxication, as are my co-workers. The meal finished, I figure, “I’m home free. I’m a little sauced, so I can go back to the office and the rest of the day will be a pleasant blur.”
Well, I was right about the latter part. Instead of going back to work, we head to a pub and order some champagne. Now I hate champagne. Too fizzy, too sweet, just give me a beer and I’m happy. Well, I’m forced to guzzle at least one glass, and once I finish that, they promptly fill me up again before I can abscond my glass and keep it free from drowing in more alcohol. Sorry, buddy, you’re going under...
By the time this is done, we’ve gone through 3 bottles of champagne, and I’m not just living in the town of Intoxication, I’m the frigging mayor. I finally persuade them to go back to work, but when I look at my watch, I figure I must be a little drunker than I thought because I swear it says 6:30. I check once, twice, and still the same. So, effectively, we’ve just wasted both the entire day and yours truly. I grab my stuff, say goodbye, and run (stumble) away thinking, “Now that’s what I call a day at the office...”