Aspects of the English Legal System

The object of this article is to point out some of the more obvious features of the English legal system for the benefit of people with no legal training. Teachers, school governors, and parents are all increasingly called upon to have some insight into the way the law affects their activ­ities, but the natural tendency is perhaps to concentrate only on those discrete areas that are of immediate concern. Sometimes, however, a broader perspective on how the parts articulate with the whole is essential to understanding what can be done with the system or why a certain result or procedure develops. Anything like a comprehensive treatment of this theme would of course fill several volumes. Within the limits of a journal article, it is only possible to touch upon a few areas, and often then it is not possible to indulge in the requisite degree of elaboration and quali­fication so beloved of lawyers. The particular areas which are dealt with in this article are the sources of law, the court structure, and the personnel of the law