The old adage is that ‘Justice delayed is Justice denied’. The idea is quite simple: if the process of Justice moves too slowly, by the time it reaches its subject, Justice has already occurred.
We are experiencing in the Civil Justice system in Britain a radical change. For centuries we have had an adversarial system with the point being made on behalf of each side by advocates who argue in front of a neutral judge intervening only for the purposes of clarification and possibly argument over the law but not to lead the process of examination (in chief, or cross examination). However, with the advent of the civil procedure rules and the Woolf reforms in April 1999, a new approach started to take root. It has now extended into the Tribunal System, and in particular, the Employment Tribunals and in all probability heralds a strong move towards an investigative inquisitorial judicial system and away from the old style adversarial approach.
