Appellate Recruitment Patterns in the Higher British Judiciary: 1850 - 1990 Page: 32
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which the barrister practices.12 A Circuit Leader is roughly analogous to a bar association
president in the United States. A similar coding error listed the first judgeship of several
judges as a justice of the peace. A justice of the peace is a lay magistrate who presides
over a magistrate's court (usually with two other lay magistrates) (Darbyshire 2001, 297-
302). This was confused with a JP designation that frequently accompanies the
designation of "Deputy Lieutenant," an honorary position frequently conferred upon a
senior member of the judiciary to serve as the deputy to the Lord Lieutenant, the
Monarch's official representative in a county. None of the judges in the database began
their careers as lay justices of the peace.
An additional error was also bound up in a judgment call. This issue dealt with the
coding of recorders as a judge's first judgeship. As discussed later, a recorder is a part-
time position taken by a QC, frequently as a training ground for a High Court judgeship.
For many of the cases this part-time position was noted in Tate's original database as the
judge's first judgeship. In a number of cases, however, it was omitted. If one chooses to
use this part-time position as the judge's first judgeship, consistently coded data should
reveal very little variation in this variable since nearly all judges, regardless of whether
the judge was promoted, have such service. In the modern era (i.e., post-war), the practice
of serving as a recorder (and more recently as a Deputy High Court Judge), has become
institutionalized. Because nearly all modern judges serve as a recorder (or, less
frequently, a similar part-time position) before their first full-time appointment, I did not
code part-time positions as the level of the first judgeship. Instead, I coded the judge's
first full-time position as the first judgeship.
12 See, for example, the web site for the Western Circuit for an explanation of circuit leadership positions,
including "leader." The site is located at http:www.westerncircuit.org.uk (accessed October 26, 2004).32
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Thomas, Bruce K. Appellate Recruitment Patterns in the Higher British Judiciary: 1850 - 1990, dissertation, December 2004; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4650/m1/41/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .