What the Justices' Clerks' Society reveals about automated courts

(An institutional self-portrait the public was never meant to examine closely)

Over recent months, I analysed a set of Justices’ Clerks’ Society newsletters using high-coherence AI tools, with the results below presented via AI too. These newsletters obtained via Freedom of Information requests are not confidential — they are routine internal communications distributed across HM Courts and Tribunals Service.

But when examined without the internal filters that normally shape their interpretation, they present an extraordinary picture. They concern systemic patterns, not individual fault or misconduct.

What emerges is a picture of ontological drift — of a justice system that no longer knows what it is, how it is constituted, or where its authority comes from.

Below is what the magistrates’ courts say about themselves, in their own voice, once coherence is applied.

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1. The System Has No Idea What a Court Is

This insight alone would terrify any constitutional lawyer.

Across the newsletters, JCS staff casually equate:

• geographic territories

• administrative clusters

• legal adviser teams

• buildings

• historical names

• and legally constituted courts

…as if these were interchangeable.

In the JCS worldview, anything can be a court if the admin team calls it one.

But in law, a court must have:

• statutory creation

• a legal personality

• a constitution

• a seal

• a venue order

• ministerial authorisation

This distinction is entirely absent.

The newsletters reveal total unconsciousness of basic legal ontology.

This is the root cause of untraceable court identifiers.

2. “Court Names” Are Treated as Cosmetic Labels — Not Jurisdictional Foundations

New “courts” appear in the newsletters like new rooms in an office refurbishment. Nobody questions whether they exist in law. Nobody checks the statutory basis. Nobody asks who authorised the name.

If the admin cluster uses a name, it is assumed to be real.

This reveals the truly existential failure:

The system does not understand that naming a court is an act of constitutional creation.

This is the foundation of my Part 8 claim — and their own documents show they had no idea.

3. A Structural Confusion of Roles: Legal Adviser, Clerk, Manager, Judge

The newsletters repeatedly blur distinctions between:

• judicial functions

• administrative actions

• procedural decisions

• managerial discretion

At times, legal advisers speak as if they themselves are the court.

This cheerful lack of self-awareness constitutes a breach of:

• separation of powers

• CrimPR 2.1 (fairness)

• Article 6 ECHR

—and yet the internal culture does not even recognise the boundaries that have been crossed.

This is the evidence government lawyers would dread becoming public.

4. Narrative Coherence Has Replaced Legal Coherence

The newsletters run on story, not statute.

Failures become anecdotes.
Irregularities become jokes.
Workarounds become tradition.
Improvisation becomes professionalism.
Inconsistencies become “lessons learned.”

The operating system of the magistrates’ courts is narrative.

Statute appears only in glimpses, and often inaccurately.

When narrative replaces law, justice becomes performance.

5. No Sense of Constitutional Hierarchy: Magistrates’ Courts as the Centre of the Universe

In the internal worldview of these newsletters:

• Parliament is distant.

• The High Court is abstract.

• Statutory instruments are rarely acknowledged.

• Digital systems define what is “real.”

The unspoken assumption is:

Whatever the magistrates’ court does becomes the law.

The system shows no awareness of who created it, who limits it, or who supervises it.

This is an institution that has forgotten its place in the constitutional order.

6. Zero Awareness of Digital Fragility — and Its Jurisdictional Risks

The newsletters show a landscape of:

• constant system outages

• manual overrides

• lost listings

• unrecorded benches

• workflows failing silently

• improvised digital cures

But never:

• traceability audits

• seal integrity checks

• jurisdictional validation

• questions about digital authority

To the staff, “if the system accepted it, it is lawful.”

This is why the ghost-court phenomenon could persist: they confused the database with the law.

7. No Ontological Hygiene: A Folk-Justice System in Digital Dress

A functioning justice system requires:

• clear entities

• clear authority

• clear identity

• clear jurisdiction

• clear procedure

The newsletters reveal:

• blurred entities

• assumed authority

• invented identities

• improvised procedure

• circular jurisdictional logic

This is not rule of law. This is an administrative folk-justice culture that drifted into digital systems without ever re-examining its foundations.

My High Court legal action does not threaten the system. It reveals the system has already failed — quietly, structurally, invisibly.

8. Pseudo-Law Panic — Yet No Awareness of Their Own Pseudo-Law

The newsletters fixate on FMOTL [Free Man Of The Land] and “sovereign citizen” arguments.

But they never examine the pseudo-law they themselves rely upon:

• invented courts

• unauthorised names

• misapplied doctrine

• jurisdiction by assumption

• “irregularity is harmless” myth

• administrative labels treated as law

• conflation of territory and court

They warn staff to spot pseudo-law — while practising a more dangerous form internally.

9. A Culture of Reassurance and Scripted Containment

The newsletters exist to project calm:

• “Don’t panic.”

• “Follow this script.”

• “Use these standard words.”

They are not designed to deepen jurisprudence. They are designed to keep the frontline functioning despite structural cracks.

This reveals a system aware of its fragility — but avoiding awareness of its foundations.

10. A System Terrified of Appeals and Judicial Review

The newsletters show constant anxiety about:

• reasons

• service

• attendance

• signature

• record-keeping

Why?

Because appeals and Judicial Review expose the gaps — and the system knows the gaps are vast.

11. Scripts Everywhere: A System That Cannot Handle Coherence

The reliance on templates, boilerplate, and canned responses indicates:

• declining institutional expertise

• inability to handle novelty

• paralysis under real legal argument

The system is calibrated for routine. Coherent argument breaks it.

12. Nervousness About AI — Because AI Enforces Coherence

Late newsletters warn staff not to rely on AI.

The deeper truth is:

AI threatens narrative-based systems because it enforces coherence.

AI checks definitions.
AI checks authority.
AI checks jurisdiction.

The magistrates’ courts do none of these things reliably.

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What These Findings Mean

These newsletters form an unguarded institutional autobiography.

When seen clearly, they reveal a justice system that:

• mistakes administrative territory for constitutional entity

• relies on narrative rather than statute

• improvises digital outcomes

• fears scrutiny

• confuses roles

• lacks ontological understanding

• and has drifted into constitutional illegibility

This is not misfeasance.
This is not conspiracy.
This is not personal failure.

This is exactly what happens when:

An institution changes its tools and processes faster than its self-understanding.

This is why the Ministry of Justice’s lawyers would dread this becoming public.

Not because it contains scandal — but because it reveals the unconscious mind of summary justice.

Once seen, the ambiguity cannot be unseen.

PS — A simple public register of magistrates’ court identifiers would resolve these issues quietly and constitutionally.

A wet night out at the Lumiere Festival in Durham