This paper examines the recent resurgence of interest in the legal biography among legal scholars. It argues that the legal biography has traditionally been treated with suspicion within the English law school due to ideological and methodological concerns about the intellectual validity and robustness of the form, and because of reservations about its true disciplinary province. Through a literary survey of legal biography, it claims a tension between intellectual and empirical approaches that parody the tension between the internal and external traditions in legal history. More recent biographies, however, have succeeded in bridging these divides and in demonstrating the potential value of legal biography in deepening our understanding of the human context of legal phenomena.
This paper considers whether there should be the power to summon bilingual juries in criminal trials in Ireland and Wales. It will examine the relationship between jury service as an obligation and privilege of citizenship, and the eligibility for jury service of Irish and Welsh speakers as a linguistic group. It will also demonstrate the relationship between the citizenship argument in its collective context and the rights and interests of individual speakers of these languages within the criminal jury trial process. In doing so, it seeks to emphasise that this is a multidimensional issue which requires an evaluation from a combination of perspectives, both collective and individual. It is this combination of perspectives, taken conjunctively, that supports the case for bilingual juries. Moreover, this particular debate has a particular relevance to the wider debate on European citizenship and how Europe views the concept of multilingual citizenship within its constitutional framework. Indeed, it raises fundamental questions about how Europe manages its diverse cultural and linguistic heritage and how speakers of minority languages are integrated on a basis of equality and respect towards their cultural and linguistic autonomy. The paper also addresses the objections to bilingual juries and will explore how the advent of bilingual juries could continue to preserve the random selection principle (the primary objection to bilingual juries) sufficiently to bring about fair, impartial and competent tribunals.
Section 321 of and Sched. 33 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 abolished many of the old restrictions on jury service eligibility previously contained in the Juries Act 1974. The result has been to widen significantly the pool of eligible jurors in criminal trials. This article addresses some of the implications of allowing lawyers, including members of the judiciary, to serve on juries, and considers the recent guidance issued to them in order that they perform their role as jurors appropriately. It will also reflect upon the Court of Appeal's recent ruling in R v Abdroikov and Others, which considers many of the pertinent issues, including the issue of jury bias.
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