Which law spells out judicial immunity? I am trying to find the exact piece of New Zealand legislation that defines the immunity of judges from civil claims resulting from doing their job (or any immunities they may have). Section 23 of the District Court Act 2016 simply equates DC judges immunity to that of HC judges: A Judge has the same immunities as a High Court Judge. The Senior Courts Act 2016 (which one would expect to spell out the immunities of HC judges) only says that associate HC judges enjoy the same immumities as regular HC judges (s 28), and so do acting judges (s 118). But just where the HC judges' immunities are defined in the first place?
new-zealand The New Zealand Supreme Court describes judicial immunity as &quot;common law doctrine&quot;: Judicial immunity is common law doctrine [citing to the English line of case law, including Sirros]. Although its existence is now acknowledged in statute, its scope remains a matter of common law. Attorney-General v Chapman [2011] NZSC 110 canada The immunity of superior court judges in Canada, including judges of the Quebec Superior Court, is inherited from English law. (Morier and Boily v. Rivard, [1985] 2 SCR 716, at paragraph 85) That judgment goes on to cite English cases dating back to 1607, and a doctrinal text (H. Brun and G. Tremblay, Droit constitutionnel) also agreeing that the immunity stems from common law (translation): This absolute immunity is a rule of the common law applicable to superior court judges even where bad faith has been alleged. Courts in Canada have also recognized that judicial immunity is now constitutionalized, through the unwritten constitutional principle of judicial independence. See e.g. Taylor v. Canada (Attorney General), [2000] 3 FC 298 (C.A.) at paragraphs 58-60.
There is a special type of law enforcement officer, called a &quot;bailiff&quot; who is charged with maintaining order in a courtroom, and often, a bailiff is a direct subordinate of a judge who must follow the judge's orders. Judges can also issue special kinds of court orders, called &quot;writs&quot; which are a direction to a law enforcement agency generally to take certain action. But, in these cases, the law enforcement agency is effectively an &quot;independent contractor&quot; in relationship to the judge with considerable discretion regarding precisely how and when a writ is carried out. Somebody in the law enforcement agency to which a writ is directed is required to take action, but no individual law enforcement officer is personally compelled to comply with this order. The quote in question is not a statement about the legal authority of a judge, however. It is a statement of &quot;realpolitik&quot;. The judge can't physically force or threaten law enforcement to do what they are told to do by a judge. The cops have the guns, not the judges. Instead, the judge relies upon law enforcement obeying the judge's orders because that is what law enforcement officers do. It's right in the job title. But, if law enforcement chose to ignore judges, in general, there is very little that judges could do about that (and in some countries, law enforcement does routinely ignore judicial directions). Some forms of executive branch authority to defy judicial orders is even legally codified, most starkly in the case of the pardon power.
In broad terms, in a three pillar democracy, the job of the legislature is to make the law, the job of the executive is to enforce the law and the job of the courts is to interpret the law. The courts may find that a piece of legislation is invalid, either in whole or in part for any number of reasons. The legislature can respond by: Repealing the legislation Changing the legislation to remove the invalidity Doing nothing. Your first question is why would they go for option 3? I can, off the cuff, think of several reasons: Time pressures, a legislature can only deal with so many pieces of legislation per year - it may not be a worthwhile investment of time to "tidy up" the statute books. Possibility of appeal, the precedent may be open to appeal or having an alternative ruling in a higher court. Precedent, unless and until the decision reaches the Supreme Court or equivalent then the decision is only binding on lower courts. Possibility of change to superordinate legislation, in the particular circumstance you cite, the local authority may leave the law on the books in the hope or expectation that the state law may be repealed or overturned - the local law would then be valid. For your second question, the judge is supposed to know. That said, judges make mistakes so a wise plaintiff/defendant will draw the judge's attention to the current state of the law. It would certainly look bad for them on appeal if it emerged that they did know and allowed the judge to make a mistake. Firstly, they are officers of the court and secondly, justice is blind but justices may remember you made them look like a fool! For your third question ... maybe. However, such a claim would be limited to what you actually lost through your lawyer's malpractice. It can't be the case because you couldn't win it anyway - the law was against you! You may be able to argue that the lawyer should be responsible for some of the costs or losses that arose from you failing to settle earlier. Good luck with that.
Is this normal? Pretty much. Witnesses lie in court all the time (in my experience, defendants, law enforcement officers and medical doctors are the most likely to lie). Dealing with a witness who lies in court under oath effectively is one of the most challenging tasks lawyers face. It is an inherently challenging hurdle to proving or defending a case. The facts as presented in court often differ in some material way from reality. It is a pretty tough thing to accurately measure, but my gut estimate would be that this happens in a least 30%-40% of cases that produce contested trials, although not infrequently, a judge or jury will not find the false testimony to be credible. On the other hand, it isn't at all uncommon (probably at least 10% of the time) for a judge or jury to believe the liars to be telling the truth, and to find the people who are telling the truth to be less credible. There is absolute immunity from civil liability for lying in court testimony, although it could, in theory, give rise to contempt of court sanctions from the judge in some circumstances, or to a prosecution for perjury. But, perjury prosecutions are, in practice, very rare, and a good share of them arise from false statements made in documents under oath, rather than from courtroom testimony. There is probably less than 1 perjury prosecution per 1000 provable lies made under oath in courtroom testimony on material issues that end up influencing the outcome in a case. I totally sympathize with how frustrating this situation is having been there in cases that I am litigating many, many times. But, in short, life isn't fair.
There is currently no difference, but there have been substantial differences in the past. Since the Courts Act 1971 (specifically s.42), the City of London has had its own county court that is on the same basis as other county courts. It is called &quot;The Mayor's and City of London Court&quot; for historical reasons, as that was the name of the court that was the previous closest equivalent. The 1971 Act establishes that the new version of the court has the same jurisdiction as any other county court, thus taking away any special privileges which the old version had. It was already almost like a county court by virtue of the City of London (Courts) Act 1964. Moreover, since the Crime and Courts Act 2013, there are no longer separate county courts, but one enormous one that sits in several places. That includes the City of London location. In criminal matters, the Crown Court (established under the same 1971 Act) is logically also one enormous court. When it sits in the City of London, it is known as the &quot;Central Criminal Court&quot; (Senior Courts Act 1981, s.8(3)), but is still the same court. It does not have any special status with respect to the City, being meant to handle cases from all of Greater London as well. Formerly, it had to operate a complex system of separate juries for City cases, but nowadays that is all uniform. For magistrates' courts, the Courts Act 2003 created a single jurisdiction for all of England and Wales. That is divided into &quot;local justice areas&quot;, one of which is the City of London - these replace the old &quot;petty sessional divisions&quot;. There are no special rules for the City. Applying the general rules for a particular criminal case would result in it being dealt with in the place where the offence is alleged to have happened, or where the accused lives, or where the witnesses mostly live, or &quot;where other cases raising similar issues are being dealt with&quot; (s.30(5)(d)). Perhaps soon, powers under the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 will be exercised to abolish local justice areas (s.45), enabling even more flexibility with the assignment of cases to courts. In particular, this is meant to make it easer to shift cases around depending on local workload, or on which court location is genuinely most convenient in all the circumstances. The Act also removes (ss. 46 and 47) the current special rules about the City of London court premises being provided by the City authorities, rather than by the Ministry of Justice which handles all the other ones. Formerly, there have been plenty of law courts for the City, or its livery companies, or St Paul's Cathedral (the consistory court had criminal jurisdiction over clergy), or the &quot;compters&quot; (debtors' prisons). Some of these still exist in a ceremonial capacity but do not function as courts. For example, the aldermen of the City can meet as the &quot;Court of Husting&quot;, which was formerly a functioning law court but nowadays has the sole purpose of enrolling certain deeds, and hasn't done that since 1978. There are still two Sherriffs, nominally associated with the Poultry Compter and Wood Street Compter, but their courts have not existed since 1867. Some of the City's officers have residual ceremonial connections with the Old Bailey or other institutions, but these have no practical impact on the work of the courts.
The core principle of stare decisis is that the law should not depend on what judge you got; two cases with the same facts should have the same outcome. In the common-law tradition, there weren't really written statutes; there was only "what's been done in the past," and so the only reference you'd have to what the law should be in some situation is past court decisions. If judges didn't have some constraints to rule similarly to before, there really wouldn't be any legal standards (because there was no written law to go back to; in civil-law countries, there always has been a written law, so precedent isn't so important). Stare decisis doesn't actually directly stop a judge from entering a decision that goes against binding precedent. However, judges are expected to obey precedent, and for the most part do what they're supposed to do. If they don't, the case will likely be reversed on appeal. Binding precedent only applies within the area a court serves; a court doesn't have to listen to precedent from a different court that has nothing to do with the case. The rule is that precedent from any court up the appeals chain is binding; federal district courts are bound by their circuit court and SCOTUS, state courts are bound by higher state courts and SCOTUS (but not other federal courts, as the case can't be appealed to them). A court can sometimes overrule its own precedent, but the cases where it can do that are rare (and so applying a higher court's precedent can also be viewed as "if you appeal to them they'll say X, so we're saying X.")
They have the same standard of proof but different onus The legal system places the onus of proving an allegation on the person making the allegation. For your example, this is A if they are suing B or the government prosecutor if B is being prosecuted. The standard of proof is “beyond reasonable doubt” if B is defending a criminal prosecution and “balance of probabilities” if B is defending a civil prosecution or a lawsuit. Courts have historically been reluctant to define these terms further because doing so can lay grounds for an appeal if the judge oversteps so they mean what their plain English formulation means and what they mean precisely in any given case is one of the things the trier of fact has to decide. For A or the prosecutor to win, they have to meet this burden for each and every element of the offence or cause of action; if they don’t, then B wins. So, B doesn’t have to offer a defence at all and will still win if A doesn’t meet their burden. If B does offer a defence then the trier of fact compares the evidence of each side and decides which they prefer and therefore whether A has met their burden. A jury doesn’t have to give reasons for their decision; a judge does. In general, the decisions of the trier of fact are not appealable unless there was no reasonable basis in evidence to support the decision. For example, the evidence of B might not be believed - this is fine, unless the reason for not believing it is that B has a beard and everyone with beards are liars. Options 2 and 3 are simple matters of comparing evidence and deciding which is preferred. Option 1 is different; it is what’s called an affirmative defence. Here, A has met their burden because B conceded. Now B is relying on the position that they had a legal excuse, that is B is alleging a position and B has the burden of proving it. Now, the burden on B is always “balance of probabilities” because B is not alleging that anyone committed a crime so they don’t have to reach the criminal standard.
A judge can ask any question of anyone in their courtroom. A judge can make any comments they like in their courtroom. They're a judge! What they can't do is exhibit bias or the apprehension of bias or take irrelevant matters into account in making judicial decisions. The judge may have a wide and deep knowledge of driving conditions in India, however, that is irrelevant to an alleged speeding offence in the United States. If it appears that the judge took this into account in their decision then there are grounds for an appeal. Similarly, if it appears that the fact that you are Indian and the judge displays bias against (or towards) Indians then that is also grounds for an appeal. An appeal court will look at the entire circumstances of the case to determine if the decision should be overturned including what was said, what the judge decided and the reasons for the decision in the written judgement (if any).