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Custodians of Continuity in an Era of Change: an Oral History of the Everyday Lives of Crown Court Clerks Between 1972 and 2015

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2018

Dvora Liberman
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Abstract

This article discusses an oral history doctoral research project about the little known, yet critical role of the court clerk in Crown Courts. It is surprising that even though Crown Court clerks have been pivotal in trials of the most serious criminal offences, they have been neglected in legal scholarship. This research project has contributed towards filling an absence in the academic literature about the nature and function of their vital work between 1972 and 2015, and was carried out by Dvora Liberman, in partnership with the London School of Economics Legal Biography Project and National Life Stories, British Library.

Keywords

oral historiesCrown Courtcourt clerkscourtsadministration of justicecriminal justice
Type
Feature Article
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 120 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 Mulcahy, L. and Sugarman, D., 2015. Introduction: Legal Life Writing and Marginalized Subjects and Sources. Journal of Law and Society, 42(1), p.1, p.13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Examples include: Patrick Polden's writing on early female barristers (2005), Mary Jane Mossman's The First Women Lawyers (2006), Clay Smith's The Making of the Black Lawyer (1993), and a compilation of essays entitled Legal Life Writing: Marginalized Subjects and Sources (Mulcahy and Sugarman, 2015)Google Scholar.

3 Sugarman, D., 2015. From Legal Biography to Legal Life Writing: Broadening Conceptions of Legal History and Socio-legal Scholarship. Journal of Law and Society, 42(1), p.13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 In 1971, the Lord Chancellor's Office became a Department of State and was called the Lord Chancellor's Department. In 2003, the Department's name was changed to the Department of Constitutional Affairs, and in 2007, it became the Ministry of Justice. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 made the Lord Chief Justice the Head of the Judiciary. Since 2007, the Department has been headed by the Secretary of State for Justice (Mulcahy, forthcoming).

5 Shetreet, S., 1979. The Administration of Justice: Problems, Value Conflicts and Changing Concepts. University of British Columbia Law Review, 13, p.53Google Scholar; Stockdale, E., 1970. The Beeching Report. British Journal of Criminology, 10(2–3), pp.189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Perks, R. and Thomson, A., eds. 2016. Oral History Reader. 3rd edition. London and New York: Routledge, p.xiiiGoogle Scholar.

7 Plummer, K., 2001. Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism. London: Sage, p.90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, P., 1988. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.7–8Google Scholar; Wieder, A., 2004. Testimony as Oral History: Lessons from South Africa. Educational Researcher, 33(6), p.23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Bertaux, D. and Thompson, P. eds. 1993. Between Generations: Family Models, Myths and Memories. International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories Volume 11. New York: Oxford University Press, p.39Google Scholar; Sugiman, P., 2013. I Can Hear Lois Now: Corrections to My Story of the Internment of Japanese Canadians – ‘For the Record’. In: Sheftel, A., and Zembrzycki, S., eds., 2013. Oral History off the record: toward an ethnography of practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p.150Google Scholar.

9 Some High Court judges preferred their personal clerk to officially open the court.

10 Interview with Karen Hazell, interviewed by Dvora Liberman, Crown Court Clerks Life Story Interviews, British Library, catalogue reference C1674/13, Track 3 [42:54–44:24].

11 In some Crown Courts, these tasks were shared with ushers.

12 Interview with Irene Elliott, interviewed by Dvora Liberman, Crown Court Clerks Life Story Interviews, British Library, catalogue reference C1674/05, Track 4 [1:19:28-1:20:25].

13 Interview with Irene Elliott [ibid.] C1674/05, Track 4 [1:22:21-1:22:36].

14 Interview with Irene Elliott [ibid.] C1674/05, Track 4 [1:29:57-1:29:58].

15 Interview with Patricia Douglas [ibid.] C1674/21, Track 3 [1:07:16-1:09:10].

16 Interview with Raymond Potter [ibid.] C1674/01, Track 15 [0:19-1:46].

17 Interview with Raymond Potter [ibid.] C1674/01, Track 15 [0:44-0:49].

18 Mulcahy, L., 2008a. The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Shifts towards the virtual trial. Journal of Law and Society, 25(4), p.486Google Scholar; Rowden, E., 2015. Distributed Courts and Legitimacy: What do we Lose When we Lose the Courthouse? Law, Culture and HumanitiesGoogle Scholar. Published online November 5, pp.11–12; Leader, K., 2010. Closed-Circuit Television Testimony: Liveness and Truth-Telling. Law, Text and Culture, 14(1), p.323Google Scholar.

19 Interview with Valerie Jerwood, interviewed by Dvora Liberman, Crown Court Clerks Life Story Interviews, British Library, catalogue reference C1674/16, Track 6 [4:03-4:31].

20 Interview with Irene Elliott [ibid.] C1674/05, Track 6 [27:43-28:03].

21 Interview with Jim Reid [ibid.] C1674/03, Track 7 [3:49-4:21].

22 Interview with Michael Bishop [ibid.] C1674/14, Track 5 [47:03-54:55].

23 Interview with Pamela Sanderson [ibid.] C1674/19, Track 8 [0:33-0:51].

24 Interview with David Dawson [ibid.] C1674/11, Track 5 [9:06-10:35].

25 Interview with Karen Hazell [ibid.] C1674/13, Track 4 [36:14-36:18].

26 High Sheriff Award ceremonies honoured citizens who actively assisted in the conviction of a criminal, such as by contacting the police if they had witnessed a crime.