What is the UK’s legal system structure?

The UK legal system structure is defined by three primary sources of law:

  • the common law (unwritten or case law)
  • the statute law (written or enacted law)
  • the European Union legislation.

English law applies in England and Wales and Northern Ireland law which applies in Northern Ireland, are all based on common-law principles.

Scottish law which applies in Scotland, is a pluralistic system based on civil-law principles, with common law elements dating back to the High Middle Ages.

While England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland diverge in the more detailed rules of common law and equity, and while there are certain fields of legislative competence devolved in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, there are substantive fields of law which apply across the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom does not have a single legal system since it was created by the political union of previously independent countries. Article 19 of the Treaty of Union, put into effect by the Acts of Union in 1707, created the Kingdom of Great Britain but guaranteed the continued existence of Scotland’s separate legal system.

UK Law

Common law (the unwritten law)

In law, common law (also known as the unwritten law, judicial precedent, judge-made law or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions.

The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision (a principle known as stare decisis).

Statute law (the written or enacted law)

Statute law is being passed in Parliament through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, so it is often referred to as Act of Parliament. The legitimacy of law passed in Parliament cannot be challenged in the courts, however its power is limited in practice by the Membership of the European Union, under which the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union law (TFEU) takes precedence over national law and also from the European Convention on Human Rights which is incorporated into English law by the Human Rights Act 1998.

The Parliament also has the power to delegate the making of legislation to other public bodies, usually the Secretary of State who is typically the head of a Government department and this legislation would have exactly the same force, as the statute law made directly from the Parliament.

Primary and Secondary legislation

The legislation of the UK legal system structure can also be broken down to primary and secondary legislation.

Bills and Acts are often referred to as primary legislation. A Bill is a proposed law which is introduced into Parliament.

An Act may delegate power to a government minister to make orders, Regulations or Rules which are known as secondary legislation.

EU legislation

The European Union legislation is also split between primary and secondary. The primary legislation is the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union as mentioned and the secondary comes in the form of Decisions, Regulations and Directives. Let’s quickly define what these are, since we see them quite regularly in English law.

Regulations have binding legal force throughout every Member State and enter into force on a set date in all the Member States.

Directives lay down certain results that must be achieved by each Member State but they are free to decide how to transpose the directives into their national laws.

And finally Decisions are EU laws relating to specific cases and directed to individual or several Member States, companies or private individuals and they are binding upon those to whom they are directed.

UK Court Structure

Depending on the wrong-doing of the offender, the trial would take place in either a County court or a Magistrates court to begin with. This can however escalate to a higher level court, if the case is not resolved and the next steps look like this:

In a Civil case you start off in a County Court, the next step up is a High Court, then there is the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court which is the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom for civil cases and the Court of Justice for significant cases at European level.

In a Criminal case you start off in a Magistrates Court, then you would escalate to a Crown Court, then to a Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court again and the Court of Justice.

As you can see, the legal route after the first two levels is pretty much the same.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the highest court in the land for all criminal and civil cases in England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and for all civil cases in Scots law. The Supreme Court came into being in October 2009, replacing the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. In England and Wales, the court system is headed by the Senior Courts of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice (for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases). The Courts of Northern Ireland follow the same pattern. In Scotland the chief courts are the Court of Session, for civil cases, and the High Court of Justiciary, for criminal cases. Sheriff courts have no equivalent outside Scotland, as they deal with both criminal and civil caseloads.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is the highest court of appeal for several independent Commonwealth countries, the British overseas territories, and the British Crown dependencies. There are also immigration courts with UK-wide jurisdiction — the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The Employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal have jurisdiction throughout Great Britain, but not Northern Ireland.

CRIMINAL CIVIL
Court of Justice of the European Communities Court of Justice of the European Communities
Supreme Court Supreme Court
Court of Appeal Court of Appeal
Crown Court

High Court of Justice

(Crown’s Bench, Chancery, Family)

Magistrates Courts County Courts

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