Senior Courts of England and Wales | Civil Procedure, Jurisdiction, Appeals | Britannica (original) (raw)

Quick Facts

Formerly (until 1981):

Supreme Court of Judicature

And (until 2009):

Supreme Court of England and Wales

Senior Courts of England and Wales, in England and Wales, judicial body that consists of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice, and the Crown Court.

Until the Judicature Act of 1873 the English court system was cluttered with courts, most of them dating back to the Middle Ages, with overlapping judicial powers. In 1873 several of those courts were abolished and replaced by a Supreme Court of Judicature consisting of the Court of Appeal and the High Court of Justice, the latter having five divisions—Chancery; Queen’s (or King’s) Bench; Common Pleas; Exchequer; and Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty. In 1881 refinement of the court system continued with the Queen’s Bench Division absorbing Common Pleas and Exchequer. Under the Courts Act of 1971, the court system of England and Wales was further refined, with other specialized courts being abolished and replaced by the Crown Court in 1972. The Crown Court is an intermediary court that is above the magistrates’ courts but below the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Supreme Court of Judicature was renamed the Supreme Court of England and Wales in 1981 and the Senior Courts of England and Wales in 2009.

The constituent courts of the current Senior Courts of England and Wales have the following judicial responsibilities: the Court of Appeal is divided into a Civil Division and a Criminal Division. The High Court of Justice is made up of three divisions which have both original and appellate jurisdiction: (1) the Chancery Division, presided over by the chancellor of the High Court in the capacity of president of the Chancery Division and dealing with business and property disputes, intellectual-property claims, estates, etc., (2) the Queen’s Bench Division, headed by a president and dealing mainly with contract, tort, and libel and slander, (3) the Family Division, headed by a president, which deals with adoption, matrimonial proceedings, and other familial matters. The Crown Court is concerned mostly with criminal cases.

The Senior Courts of England and Wales, as a comprehensive body, sit below the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which is the final court of appeal.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.