Richard Denenberg

(CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND) — The medieval warren of buildings along the narrow Cambridge street known as Petty Cury was obliterated during the last decade to make room for a starkly modern commercial complex of glass, steel and brick. But the top floor, which opened this spring, was reserved for an institution whose origins are no less medieval than the townscape that had been swept away — a Magistrates’ Court. It is presided over by judges who are not lawyers, who serve without pay and who spend their non-judicial hours working as postmen, nurses, teachers and janitors. They are Britain’s Justices of the Peace, and the readiness of the urban planners in Cambridge to save a place for them in the new architectural order attests to the vital role that the lay person still plays in that nation’s criminal justice system. The contrast with the United States could hardly be greater. The non-lawyer American JP has become an almost derisory figure, a pathetic vestige of a once important public office. The very name calls to mind some