REFORMING THE LAW
SIR,—Mr. Mursell invites me to justify the statement that our processes of law are 'ramshackle and cry out for reform.' It seems incredible that anyone would need such justification in the light of the enormous amount of discussion which has been devoted to the subject in recent years; but on the assumption that Mr. Mursell is making a serious request and not indulging in some droll jape. here goes.
Since the end of the war there have been a number of committees appointed to investigate Various aspects or the law and its procedures including the Denning Committee, the Austin Jones Com- mittee, the Willink Commission, the Evershed Com- mittee and the Tucker Committee. By no means all the reforms they have recommended have been car- ried out. Currently an Inter-Departmental Committee appointed by the Home Secretary is examining Appeals procedure, a Royal Commission has been sot up to examine punishment and penalties, the Lord Chief Justice has issued new Judges' Rules, the Home Office has put out some advice to the Judges on sentencing and the Magistrates' Association has com- missioned a study into the divergencies in the way motorists are treated by their own members.
Outside what may loosely be called this Establishment-inspired action there is constant pres- sure and calls for reform from such bodies as the National Council for Civil Liberties, Justice, the Police Federation and the Society for Individual Freedom—in fact, almost every group which is con- cerned about the operation of the legal machine.
This widespread attention is hardly likely to have . been focused on a system which is perfect, however impertinent Mr. Mursell may feel I have been in postulating an opinion which differs from his own. I assume, from the somewhat coy asides in his letter and the shrill indignation he displays against 'laymen' who are not so brilliant as he, that Mr. Mursell is himself a lawyer.
As he began his letter with the deadly barb against me that 'uninformed criticism is apt to make the critic look ridiculous,' Mr. Mursell might care, in the interests of accuracy, to spend an hour or so browsing through the book Law Reform Now, edited by Lord Gardiner, QC, and Mr. Andrew Martin, PhD. With contributions from a dis- tinguished list of lawyers and legal experts it con- tains so many proposals for reforming the law and its processes that, as the blurb says, 'even a short summary of them would run into many pages.' Justi- fied, Mr. Mursell?
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LEIGH VANCE
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