Streamline criminal law

By Monidipa Fouzder » A new effort to codify the criminal law is long overdue, the lord chief justice has said, recommending the drafting of ‘a single document that sets out the nature of criminal conduct’. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd told a dinner for Her Majesty’s judges in London that criminal law ‘is contained in a maze of innumerable, to some, but of course not those who are at that court, impenetrable, statutes and common law developments over the centuries, which it is difficult to defend as entirely rational’. As such it is ‘long overdue for clarification and simplification’, he said. ‘We ought to be able to look to a single document that sets out the nature of criminal conduct, in other words, a modern code.’ In a wide-ranging speech, Lord Thomas said the judiciary is now playing a ‘central role’ in promoting the UK as a forum for commercial dispute resolution.

[Courtesy: The Law Society Gazette]