His Honour Nicholas Cooke QC: How the UK's judicial system has changed

Season 2, Episode 9,   Nov 12, 2021, 08:15 AM

His Honour Nicholas Cooke QC (1973) is a former Senior Circuit Judge at the Central Criminal Court, often referred to as "The Old Bailey". Despite retiring as a judge a few years ago, he is keeping incredibly busy - he was recently made an Honorary Fellow at Aberystwyth University, he's doing a Research Degree at Oxford, he's on the Development Board of performing arts charity Orpheus, and he's the Chair of Fields in Trust Wales.

In this conversation, Nick is incredibly honest about how he has seen the judicial system in the UK change over the course of his career, and how this contributed towards his reasons for retiring - and for his reasons to start a Research Degree in his sixth decade.

Based on a lecture he gave on Bribery and Corruption in the City (which you can watch here), in this conversation Nick discusses the growth of specimen directions and their impact upon the role of the judge - should a judge be the lofty lawyer, the lawyer as a philosopher who evaluates the rules to see how they might be applied, or should the judge be a technician, or an applier of the rules set out by committees?

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