THE SUPREME COURT

benches are curved, so people can see one another during hearings and to create the atmosphere of an academic seminar. The bench design was conceived by Londonbased Japanese designer Tomoko Azumi and they are made from American walnut.

What did we see?

Jonathan R, Year 12 writes...

On 14th June, A Level Economics and Politics sixth formers visited the Supreme Court.

History of the Supreme Court

The building which houses the Supreme Court predates the Court itself by nearly 100 years. It was designed by Scottish architect James S Gibson, and the construction took from 1906 to 1913 to complete. Situated opposite the Houses of Parliament, and flanked by the Treasury and Westminster Abbey, the UK Supreme Court was established in October 2009 under the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005.

Purpose of the Supreme Court

The 12 member Supreme Court is the final court of appeal for civil matters throughout the UK, and for criminal matters in England, Wales and in Northern Ireland. As the highest court of appeal, this court ensures British law is correctly interpreted and applied.

The court rooms

The Supreme Court’s court rooms differ from normal courts. For example, everyone is on the same level, from the judges to the lawyers, so they are all on equal ground.

There are twelve Supreme Court Justices but they don’t all sit on cases at the same time, as cases are usually heard by a panel of five Justices. However, depending on the importance or complexity of the case, this can be increased to seven or nine. On two rare occasions, eleven Justices have sat on cases that were deemed to be of strong constitutional importance, for example, the case of PM Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament. The

We arrived at the Supreme Court at 9.45am and went in. To enter you have an airport style security check so, once through this, we went up a large sweeping staircase and entered Court Room 1. We all chose a place to sit, some sat in the chairs for the Justices, some chose counsels benches. Once seated, we began to debate a past case, and two boys were selected to be lawyers, arguing for the defence and the prosecution. The hearing centred around the case of an innocent woman fatally shot by a stray bullet from a gang member, who intended to murder a rival. The debate focused on whether this crime was murder or manslaughter. Then it was time for the Justices to send down their verdict: murder. It was a really interesting day.