Judges must show courtesy, respect and good-humour - and never, however great the temptation, lose their tempers, the UK’s most senior judge has said.
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, president of the UK Supreme Court, outlined the way judges should behave as he called for the workings of the courts to be user-friendly.
The courts must be “properly accessible and understandable to non-lawyers from the beginning to the end”, he said in an address to the Criminal Justice Alliance released yesterday.
Judges, lawyers and court staff “have to go out of their way to ensure that the non-lawyers who appear in court, or are in other ways involved in the trial process, are not alienated or frightened”, he said.
Witnesses, jurors, those accused in criminal trials