Professor J.R.Spencer, QC proposed two questions: Why do we enact criminal justice legislation that is impenetrable? What could be done to avoid this happening?
He called for a code of criminal procedure, and a code of criminal law.
"To whom are our laws directed? Or to ask the question in another way, to whom is Parliament speaking when it passes a law?
"In principle, the answer, surely, is that our laws in general (and our criminal laws in particular) are directed to our citizens: to set out rules for their behaviour, and to tell them what is likely to happen if they break them.
"But what chance has the ordinary citizen of understanding them if... they are written in such obscure language that even professional judges have difficulty in understanding them?"
