Juridical system of Great Britain

British law comes from two main sources: laws made in Parliament and Common Law, which is based on previous judgments and customs. England and Wales have no criminal code or civil code because there is no written constitution. There are two branches: one deals with criminal law and the other one with civil law. Criminal law involves acts such as murder and a person found guilty of such crimes is punished. Civil law deals with disputes between people or bodies. The courts are at the centre of the legal system. At the preliminary level of the system are magistrates courts. More serious criminal cases then go to the Crown Court. If a defendant in a Crown Court pleads not guilty to a criminal charge there follows a trial, after which a jury delivers a verdict of guilty or not guilty. A defendant may be given permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal. The highest court of appeal in England and Wales is the House of Lords. The legal system also includes juvenile courts, which deal with faults of youthful offenders and coroners courts, which investigate violent, sudden or unnatural deaths under suspicious circumstances. One of the central principles of the legal system in England and Wales is that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. In serious criminal cases the decision on whether the accused are innocent or guilty rests with the 12 men and women of the Jury. They have to be convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. The fundamental principle of law in England and Wales is that people can never be prosecuted for the same crime twice, even if it is later proved that they were in fact guilty. People who want to appeal against a conviction can do so to the Court of Appeal. T succeed, an appeal must produce new evidence to support the innocence of the convicted person and than an appeal cannot be argued on the simple ground that a jury made the wrong decision. Some senior lawyers have criticized the system of appeals because they consider it to be of little effect for failing to correct cases in which someone is wrongfully convicted and is guiltless (so called miscarriages of justice). So many lawyers believe that there should be promoted an entirely new system to correct all miscarriages of justice.