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Jan 15, 2024 · Judges play a critical role in upholding ethical standards within Canada’s legal system. They are expected to adhere to a set of principles and responsibilities that ensure justice and fairness. Impartiality: Judges must remain neutral and unbiased, making decisions solely based on the law and evidence presented.
A judge is a public official with the authority to hear and decide cases in a court of law. Judges play a crucial role in the legal system, interpreting laws, overseeing court proceedings, and ensuring justice is served. Their decisions can significantly influence the outcomes of cases, particularly during sentencing and adjudication processes.
- Overview
- Lay judges
- Professional judges in the civil-law tradition
judge, public official vested with the authority to hear, determine, and preside over legal matters brought in a court of law.
In jury cases, the judge presides over the selection of the panel and instructs it concerning pertinent law. The judge also may rule on motions made before or during a trial. In countries with a civil-law tradition, a more active role customarily has been assigned to the judge than in countries with a common-law tradition. In civil-law courts the procedure is inquisitorial—i.e., judges do most of the questioning of witnesses and have a responsibility to discover the facts. In common-law courts the procedure is adversarial—i.e., the lawyers for each side do most of the questioning of witnesses and the presentation of evidence.
There are many kinds of judges, ranging from an untrained justice of the peace to a member of the U.S. Supreme Court or of the Court of Queen’s Bench. In the United States judges are elected or appointed. Most federal judges are appointed for life by the president with the advice or consent of the Senate. The highest-ranking judge in the U.S. legal system is the chief justice of the United States. See also judgment; judiciary; magistrates’ court; Missouri Plan.
The role and power of judges vary enormously, not only from country to country but often within a single country as well. For example, a rural justice of the peace in the United States—often untrained in the law, serving part-time, sitting alone in everyday work clothes in a makeshift courtroom, collecting small fees or receiving a pittance for a salary, trying a succession of routine traffic cases and little else—obviously bears little resemblance to a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—a full-time, well-paid black-robed professional, assisted by law clerks and secretaries, sitting in a marble “palace” with eight colleagues and deciding at the highest appellate level only questions of profound national importance. Yet both persons are judges.
In most civil-law countries, judges at all levels are professionally trained in the law, but in many other countries they are not. In England part-time lay judges greatly outnumber full-time professional judges. Called magistrates or justices of the peace, they dispose of more than 95 percent of all criminal cases and do so with general public satisfaction and the approbation of most lawyers (see magistrates’ court). Professional judges handle only the relatively small number of very serious crimes; most of their time is devoted to civil cases. England places an unusually heavy reliance on lay judges, but they are far from unknown in the courts of many other countries, particularly at the lowest trial level. This was also true in the former Soviet Union and remains so in the United States. In some countries of the Middle East (e.g., Israel and Iran), lay judges constitute religious courts and are selected for service on the basis of their knowledge of and fidelity to nonsecular rules and laws. In Finland panels of lay judges sit with credentialed judges in district court criminal cases (and may also be used in some civil cases pertaining to domestic issues). The Japanese enacted legislation in the early 21st century to introduce lay judges into the country’s legal system.
There is considerable diversity in the way lay judges are chosen and used in judicial work. In the United States, for example, lay judges are popularly elected for limited terms, whereas in England they are appointed by a Judicial Appointments Commission (subject to approval by the lord chancellor) to serve until retirement or removal. In England lay judges serve intermittently in panels on a rotating basis for short periods, whereas in the United States they sit alone and continuously. In South Africa lay judges (called assessors) always sit with professional judges; in England they sometimes do; and in the United States they never do. In some developing countries many judges at all levels have little formal legal training. Sometimes they are religious authorities rather than lawyers, since in many countries religion and secular government are not sharply differentiated, and the law derives from religious doctrine. The vast majority of countries that use lay judges at the lowest trial level, however, insist upon professionally trained judges in trial courts of general jurisdiction and in appellate courts.
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Professional judges in civil-law countries are markedly different in background and outlook from professional judges in common-law countries. Both have legal training and both perform substantially the same functions, but there the similarities cease. In a typical civil-law country, a person graduating from law school makes a choice between a judic...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Statutory law takes priority – a rule that parliament makes is held over a decision that a judge makes unless parliaments rule is unconstitutional Lord Denning member of the British house of lords, who is the author/ responsible for writing many rules of precedent in many different areas and jurisdictions of common law, born in 1899 and died in 1999 – a common law system in which judicial ...
Nov 3, 2015 · In the Commentary to Rule 4.06 (1), the Law Society of Alberta Code states: Proceedings and decisions of courts and tribunals are properly subject to scrutiny and criticism by all members of the public, including lawyers, but judges and members of tribunals are often prohibited by law or custom from defending themselves.
- Alice Woolley
or not.This is a cornerstone of the rule of law.Judges individually and collectively should protect,encourage and defend judicial independence. 4.Judges must,of course,reject improper attempts by litigants, politicians,officials or others to influence their decisions.They must also take care that communications with such persons that
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Judges must render a fair decision when there is a conflict between two parties. Their decisions are made on the basis of the facts and evidence presented to them, decisions previously rendered by other Canadian courts, and according to the law applicable to the situation. The judges' decision is final, unless one of the two parties refers the case to a court of appeal.
