Where does judicial power come from?
On attribution, statute, and the Single Justice Procedure
This note was prepared as a neutral briefing for legal, academic, and civil-society audiences interested in questions of judicial authority and attribution in modern, high-volume justice systems.
I am publishing it here because Substack readers may find it a useful summary of a narrow Civil Procedure Rules Part 8 claim currently in progress, which seeks declaratory clarification of the statutory basis (if any) for the attribution of judicial power in proceedings conducted under the Single Justice Procedure.
The document is prospective, analytical, and concerned with legal structure rather than outcomes.
Briefing: Geddes v Secretary of State for Justice
This High Court claim probes a quiet but critical question: is judicial power in streamlined justice systems explicitly grounded in statute, or inferred from process?
1. What this claim is (and is not)
This is a Part 8 claim in the High Court of England & Wales seeking declaratory relief only on a pure question of law. There is no dispute of fact and no remedy sought beyond legal clarity.
The claim does not challenge:
any individual decision or conviction,
the fairness or efficiency of the Single Justice Procedure (SJP),
the conduct or status of magistrates,
or any specific court or proceeding.
It is not an appeal, a judicial review, or a collateral attack. The claim is prospective only and expressly avoids retrospective invalidation or personal relief.
2. The narrow question before the Court
The question before the Court is:
Which statutory provision or provisions, if any, attribute judicial power to the performance of a specific judicial act by a magistrate in proceedings conducted under the Single Justice Procedure?
This cuts to the core. The claim asks whether Parliament has explicitly linked judicial power to particular acts within the SJP, or whether such authority is being inferred from the existence of a process.
3. Two competing models of judicial authority
The claim exposes a tension between two models of judicial authority.
Attribution-based model: Judicial power flows explicitly from statute → to a legally constituted court → to specific judicial acts → producing binding outcomes.
Workflow-based model: Authority is inferred from administrative process, operational practice, or systemic scale, rather than from express statutory attribution.
The claim does not argue for either model. It asks which model the law actually adopts.
4. Attribution as the mechanism of traceability
Attribution is the mechanism that makes judicial authority verifiable rather than presumed.
It allows authority to be traced:
forward, from lawful institutional existence to lawful outcome; and
backward, from an outcome to a demonstrable judicial act by a tribunal established by law.
Without explicit attribution, authority is no longer proven. It is presumed—weakening the chain that connects law, process, and outcome.
5. Court identity, naming, and legal existence
Judicial power has traditionally been exercised through courts as legally constituted and identifiable entities, established by statute and associated with a specific place.
In high-volume, administratively mediated systems, court identity and naming have become increasingly flexible. In digital contexts, that flexibility is not neutral: it can blur the line between a legally constituted court and an administrative process.
The claim treats court identity not as a matter of convenience, but as a constitutional precondition of lawful adjudication.
6. Why high-volume and digital justice systems stress these premises
The Single Justice Procedure operates at scale and largely on the papers. Scale and digitisation place stress on premises formed in a lower-volume, physically convened judicial environment.
The claim does not criticise streamlined or digital justice. It highlights a structural reality: as systems scale, explicit attribution of judicial power becomes essential to prevent drift from law to habit.
7. Why the claim is framed as declaratory and prospective
The claim is deliberately framed to avoid disruption. By seeking declaratory clarification only, it:
avoids retrospective consequences,
avoids findings against individuals or institutions,
and avoids operational entanglement.
This framing sidesteps “chaos” arguments and forces attention back to first principles: are the statutory foundations of judicial authority explicit, or merely assumed?
8. What clarification achieves (in either direction)
If statutory attribution exists, identifying it strengthens traceability, legal certainty, and consistency.
If no such attribution exists, the issue is not a crisis but a case of constitutional incompleteness, signalling a need for legislative precision.
Either outcome sharpens the system. Neither is disruptive; both promote constitutional clarity.
9. Constitutional safeguards engaged by the claim
Although formally narrow, the claim engages long-established constitutional safeguards governing the exercise of coercive public power.
English constitutional law has consistently required that judicial authority be attributable, identifiable, and answerable. The rejection of general warrants, the insistence on tribunals established by law, and the principle that judicial acts must be traceable to lawful authority all reflect the same concern: that power exercised without a clear legal source becomes resistant to challenge.
These safeguards do not depend on outcomes or intentions. They operate at the level of legal structure, ensuring that judicial power remains bounded by law rather than inferred from practice.
10. Modern failure modes the claim seeks to guard against
The claim therefore raises, without asserting, a set of constitutional questions that arise in modern, high-volume justice systems:
whether individuals may be subjected to determinations by tribunals whose legal existence is not objectively ascertainable from the record;
whether judicial power is being exercised through administrative process rather than through legally constituted courts;
whether acts not clearly attributable to a specific judicial authority remain legally impleadable—capable of being challenged, reviewed, or held to account.
These are not speculative concerns. They are the precise failure modes that earlier constitutional limits were designed to prevent, and which require renewed attention as adjudication becomes more digitally mediated and operationally scaled.
11. Why civil society, academia, and NGOs should notice
The issues raised by this claim extend beyond the Single Justice Procedure.
They are relevant to:
the integrity of mass justice systems,
the governance of hybrid administrative–judicial processes,
the accountability of automated or efficiency-driven decision-making,
and the preservation of democratic oversight in delegated authority.
For civil society, academic, and policy audiences, the claim offers a neutral analytical lens for assessing whether modern justice systems continue to meet the constitutional conditions under which judicial power may lawfully be exercised.