Judicial Reform in the UK

(Required for Comparative Justice Students)
When the Labour Party took control of British government in 1997 one of the reforms the party proposed was constitutional reform. The proposed reforms included abolishing the Lord Chancellor, creating a Supreme Court, and establishing an independent judicial commission to appoint judges. Over the last ten years the plan has crawled through the British political system meeting with strong opposition from the Law Lords. See this summary of the proposed plans and this UK Independent report on the response from the Law Lords. In the spring 2004, the Lords successfully defeated the reform plan as reported by the Guardian and the BBC, or at least delayed it for 10 years.