The Myth of Judicial Independence

Mike McConville is Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham and Founding Dean of the faculty of law, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Mike has been the Head of Law at the University of Warwick, the City University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has researched and published widely in the area of socio-legal research in England and Wales, the USA, and China. Areas that he has covered include, the investigative and prosecution process, plea bargaining, the jury, policing, neighbourhood watch, criminal defence.Luke Marsh is Associate Professor at the faculty of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Door Tenant at 25 Bedford Row, London. He has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia (New York), Auckland, Waseda (Tokyo), Nottingham, and UCL. Luke was the co-founding General Editor of Archbold News (Hong Kong) and is widely published in the area of criminal justice and human rights. His most recent work examines the erosion of the adversarial process in the English criminal justice system.

• 1: Introduction and Overview 2: The Management of Criminal Justice: An Early Challenge 3: The Origin of the Judges' Rules 4: The Aftermath: 1918-1960 5: The First Draft: The Judges and the Home Office 6: The War of Attrition and the Vanquishing of the Judges 7: The Legacy of the 1964 Rules 8: Rule of Law and Common Law 9: Constitutionalism and the Westminster Model 10: The Politics of the Judiciary 11: The Global Diaspora 12: Appraisal and Review

This book offers a fascinating analysis of behind-the-scenes interplay between English judges, politicians, Whitehall, and the police over the non-statutory rules which throughout the twentieth century were meant to secure the liberty of the subject from oppressive police action. In a democracy, of course, these should have been decided by Parliament, but hidden from public gaze, the judges - those alleged custodians of liberty - allowed their rules to be weakened and undermined by the executive. So can we boast of a judiciary that is truly independent of the state and its power establishment when called upon to restrain police powers, and when making other decisions on crime and the constitution?