The task of trying cases and sentencing offenders in the magistrates' courts of this country is almost entirely done by a force of amateur justices. Of these there were 27,000 in 1987, of whom nearly 24,000 were active. Their number has been increased steadily in an attempt to keep pace with the rise in crime. Only some 55 magistrates are paid, full-time professionals – ‘stipendiary magistrates’. There is at first something odd in the office of justice of the peace continuing in an age that has been steadily turning away from the amateur in favour of the professional. One might have expected that in the years since 1945 the unpaid justice would have been replaced by paid magistrates, yet the system of lay justices not only continues but is more firmly established today than it was before the war.

In the 1920s and 1930s there was a growing body of criticism of justices. Some people thought that there had been a deterioration in the standards of magistrates' courts, but a more likely explanation is that a more vocal type of defendant had been appearing there. An important factor was the rise in the number of cases under the Road Traffic Acts: in 1910–14 road traffic cases were under 10 per cent of the total, but by 1938 they had reached 60 per cent.