Formation and early history The appeal system before 1875 was chaotic. The superior courts system consisted of 12 different courts, with appeal on common law matters to the
Court of Exchequer Chamber, chancery matters to the
Court of Appeal in Chancery and other matters to the
Privy Council. The Judicature Commission, which was founded in 1867 to investigate the formation of a "Supreme Court" (a High Court and Court of Appeal), conducted a review of this. The result was published in 1869. The recommendation was that there should be a common system of appeal from all of the High Court divisions, with a limited set of appeals allowed to the
House of Lords. This reform was implemented by the
Judicature Acts, with the
Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 giving an almost limitless right of appeal to the Lords. The new legal structure provided a single Court of Appeal, which heard appeals from all the various divisions of the new unified
High Court of Justice. It only heard civil cases: opportunities for appealing in criminal cases remained limited until the 20th century.
Changes in appellate jurisdiction and procedure The absence of limits on appeals to the House of Lords was the cause of much concern: it led to an additional set of expensive and time-consuming appeals from the Court of Appeal, which thus could not take decisions in the knowledge that they were final. The appeals from the
county courts were seen similarly, involving an appeal to the High Court of Justice and the bypassing of the Court of Appeal for a second set of appeals to the Lords. The
Administration of Justice (Appeals) Act 1934, a short statute, solved both problems neatly by abolishing the appeal of county court decisions to the High Court and instead sending them automatically to the Court of Appeal, and by establishing that appeals to the Lords could only take place with the consent of the Court of Appeal or of the Lords themselves. A second set of reforms to the appeals system followed the report of the
Evershed Committee on High Court Procedure in 1953, which recognised the high cost to the litigants of an additional set of appeals, particularly since the loser in a civil case paid the victor's legal bills. Among the few changes that were made, the practice ceased of counsel reading out the judgment, cross-examinations, documents and evidence given in the lower court; this saved time and costs. The process of "
leapfrogging" (appealing from the High Court to the House of Lords without needing to go through the Court of Appeal), which the committee had recommended, was eventually brought into force with the
Administration of Justice Act 1969. A separate
Court of Criminal Appeal had been established in 1908. In 1966 this was merged with its older namesake, establishing the present-day structure of a single Court of Appeal with two Divisions: Civil and Criminal. In the early 1960s there was discussion between judges and academics in the United Kingdom and the United States comparing the processes of appeal used in each nation. Although the British judges found the emphasis on written arguments unattractive, they did like the idea of pre-reading: that the court should read the pleadings of counsel, the case being appealed and the judgment from the lower court before delivering its judgment. But the idea was quietly scrapped, despite a successful tryout in the Court of Appeal. The court over which
Lord Denning presided from 1962 to 1982 was under no pressure and had no inclination to modernise, with liaisons and management handled by clerks with little knowledge. This changed in 1981 with the appointment of a Registrar, John Adams, an academic and lawyer, who significantly reformed the internal workings of the Court.
The Woolf and Bowman reforms In July 1996,
Lord Woolf published
Access to Justice, a report on the accessibility of the courts to the public. Woolf identified civil litigation as being characterised by excessive cost, delay and complexity, and succeeded in replacing the diverse rules with a single set of
Civil Procedure Rules. Before Woolf had even published his final report, Sir Jeffery Bowman, the recently retired senior partner of
PriceWaterhouse, was commissioned to write a report on the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal. Bowman noted a growing workload and delays, with 14 months between setting down and disposing of a case in 70% of cases, the rest taking even longer than that – some had taken five years. He recommended extending the requirement to ask leave to appeal to almost all appeal cases; allowing certain appeals to be heard at a lower level; focusing of procedure; imposition of time limits on oral arguments; and the use of judicial time more towards reading and less towards sitting in court. Bowman's recommendations were mainly enacted through statutory provisions, such as Part IV of the
Access to Justice Act 1999. In
Tanfern Ltd v Cameron-MacDonald [2000] 1 WLR 1311,
Brooke LJ laid down the procedural methods of the Court of Appeal post-Woolf and Bowman. With a few exceptions, such as cases where "the liberty of the subject" is an issue, permission is required to appeal, and may be granted either by the lower court or by the Court of Appeal. As a general rule, appeals are now limited to a review of the decision of the lower court, only allowing a full appeal where there was a serious procedural irregularity or the decision was wrong through "blatant error". == Divisions ==