Lesson video

Hi there, you all right? My name is Mrs. Tomassi and I'm gonna be working through with you on your citizenship lesson today.

So if you've got everything that you need and you're all good to go, we will make a start.

So today's title is, "What Does The Supreme Court Do?" This is part of the unit on what is the nature of the British Constitution? So hopefully by the end you'll be able to explain the main role of the Supreme Court.

The keywords you're gonna see throughout the lesson, they will be in bold, so you can keep an eye and you can always refer back to this slide, is gonna be court.

A court is a formal legal institution where disputes are heard and resolved and where justice is administered according to the law.

The judiciary, this is the branch of the state that is responsible for enforcing the law.

It's composed of judges and other legal officials.

And the House of Lords.

So the House of Lords is the upper house of parliament composed of life peers and hereditary peers who scrutinise the bills approved by the House of Commons.

The House of Lords meets in the Palace of Westminster.

So the first learning cycle for today is why does the Supreme Court exist? So in the UK, we have a separation of power between three areas.

Do you already know what those areas are? I'll give you a chance, did you get it? So we've got the executive, that's the government.

You've then got the legislative, so that's parliament and parliament composes of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the monarch.

And then you've got the judiciary, which is the judges and the magistrates, et cetera.

So that's your legal branch.

Now, this separation and powers has evolved over time.

The Supreme Court was created to ensure a separate judiciary branch and it was distinct from the legislative branch in order to uphold this power, and this is what we're looking at in this session, because there hasn't always been a separation of powers between the judiciary and the legislative.

And that's what we will take a look at now.

So here are some key dates that we are gonna look at through this learning cycle.

So you've got here from 1399 where the House of Lords is the single highest court of appeal.

We've got 1876, which is the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 2005, the Constitutional Reform Act.

And then 2009 when the House of Lords is referred to the Supreme Court.

We can take a look at them dates in more detail.

So starting at the beginning, we're gonna go back to 1399.

Now, the House of Lords at this point is the single highest court of appeal.

Now, what that means is that before that, both houses, so do you remember the other one? The House of Commons? We've got the House of Commons and the House of Lords and they both heard the petitions, and what it means when it's say an appeal is in the court, if somebody's not happy with the decision or they don't agree with the decision that's been made, they might appeal it and they're then aiming to go to the next higher up court to say, "Hmm, do you agree with it? Is it quite right?" And then they're looking to have that decision appealed or checked to make sure that the law is right.

So at that point, the highest court of appeal before 1399 was the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

And what they did then, was they transferred it and said, "Hmm, okay, actually it's just gonna be the House of Lords that are doing these appeals." So the next biggest date takes us all the way to 1876.

Now, if we're starting to think here, what is the role of the House of Lords? So they're there to scrutinise the House of Commons on laws.

It doesn't actually mean that they're legally trained.

So although they're the highest court of appeal, they might not necessarily have any legal background, yet they are checking that the law is correct at the highest point in the country.

So at this point, the Appellate Jurisdiction Act was passed.

The act allowed the monarch to appoint law lords and what a law lord was, was it was a very highly qualified judge.

So now no longer just having members of the House of Lords making decisions on the appeals, they were actual judges in the House of Lords doing the work.

Now, yes, they've kind of taken one step and now they've got specifically legally trained people in the House of Lords.

They actually were then also members of the House of Lords.

So they could still debate and vote in parliament.

So if you're thinking back to them branches of separation, have we got a separation between the legislative branch and the judiciary yet? Probably not quite, it's getting there though.

So it's still not as clear cut, 'cause there is a cutover where the law lords can still debate on laws being passed and scrutinised.

So quick check for understanding here.

True or false, law lords were only part of the judiciary branch? That is false.

Why is that false? So law lords were members of the House of Lords and they were able to debate and vote in parliament and this means they were also part of the legislative branch.

So now if we move forward, again, all the way to 2005, so this is actually more recent in terms of the historical timeline and this takes us to the Constitutional Reform Act.

And what this did was ended the Lord Chancellor's combined role as being the head of judiciary, a member of the executive.

So remember, the executive branch is the government.

So they were the Minister for Justice in the cabinet, so they were part of that and they were a speaker in the House of Lords, which is part of the legislative branch.

So actually at this point, the Lord Chancellor crossed over all three branches.

So we've learned here actually, there might not be a separation of powers.

So what this act did was said, "Okay, right, we're gonna create a separation of powers between the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.

The Lord Chancellor no longer is part of all three branches and we're gonna establish this thing called the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom." Eventually, the judicial functions that previously were from the House of Lords are also gonna be taken over.

So then the House of Lords purely becomes a legislative branch.

So the Lord Chancellor is appointed by the monarch, on advise of the prime minister, and they're a senior member of the cabinet, which is again part of that executive branch.

The 2005 saw the act come in place and then it was in 2009 once the House of Lords actually transferred their legal responsibilities to the Supreme Court.

And what happened there was the Supreme Court then became the highest court of appeal in the UK and this meant it was completely separated, had a separate building, separate powers and it created that separation between the judiciary and the legislative.

So at that time, all the current law lords who were part of the House of Lords, became the new Supreme Court justices.

So they transferred over.

Now, the first justices were still able to retain their titles and roles as law lords, but they couldn't sit or vote in the House of Lords.

So again, it was ensuring that that separation was there between the legislative and the judiciary, so once they were part of the Supreme Court.

Then from October, 2009, any new justices of the Supreme Court were chosen directly by the court through a special process rather than being members of the House of Lords.

So again, it just completely got that area separated.

So here we have the Supreme Court that sits in Parliament Square, which is in London.

Once it was established in 2009, it could increase the public being able to access it, because it's relocated in a new building and it also was the first time that people were able to observe decisions being made.

So this was the first time that the public could be involved and see the court in action.

And from 2025, some cases are also being live streamed.

So for the people that can't actually get into London to watch what's going on, they can watch it from home as well.

So again, they are still making sure they are accessible to the public.

Another check for understanding here.

So match the year to the key event that took place.

You got A, 1399 B, 1876, C, 2005 and D, 2009.

Did you manage to get them? So 1399, that was the House of Commons stops hearing petitions, appeals from citizens.

1876 is the monarch appoints law lords as part of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act.

2005 saw the Constitutional Reform Act and that was the Lord Chancellor no longer the head of the judiciary.

And then in 2009, the House of Lords is referred to the Supreme Court and it becomes the highest court of the appeal in the UK.

Again, now we're moving on to the first task for this learning cycle, which is to identify the correct statement and explain why it is correct.

So we've got Jun here saying, "The Supreme Court has allowed for a separation between the legislative and executive branches." Whereas Sam is saying, "The Supreme Court has allowed for a separation between the legislative and judiciary branches." Take some time now, decide who's correct and then explain why and then we can come back and feedback afterwards.

How did you find that? Did you manage to work out that the correct statement was Sam? The reason why, your answer could look similar to this.

So we've got Sam is correct.

Before the Supreme Court was created in 2009, the House of Lords was involved in both lawmaking as part of parliament and also acting as a court.

This made it unclear where the line was between the judiciary, judges and courts and legislative, parliament.

The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 set up the Supreme Court to make the judiciary separate from Parliament, which helped make the separation of powers clearer.

Now the Supreme Court is the highest court in the UK and judges or justices can't be part of parliament anymore, which makes the judiciary and legislative branches distinct from each other.

Now, if we move on to the second part of Task A, which is to create a timeline with four key dates to show how power has separated over time and led to the creation of the Supreme Court.

So take some time, pause if you create your timeline and then we can come back and we can have a look and see if we've got the dates in the right place.

How did you find that? Now, your timeline could have looked like this below.

So we've got there that first important key date is 1399, which the House of Lords is the highest court of appeal.

Moving on to 1876 where the Appellate Jurisdiction Act again, if you couldn't remember the name of that, maybe you've remembered that the main point there was the monarch appointed law lords.

In 2005, we've got the Constitutional Reform Act.

Again, if you couldn't remember the name, it's just that main idea that you had the three roles of the Lord Chancellor and they were reduced to ensure that separation.

And then obviously 2009, the House of Lords referred to the new Supreme Court and the building.

Now, we're gonna move on to the second learning cycle for this session, which is what is the role of the Supreme Court? So we've looked at why the Supreme Court exists, we're now moving on to what the Supreme Court actually does.

So in England and Wales different courts ensure that each case is heard by the right person with the correct knowledge and expertise.

So less serious cases are dealt with in lower courts, while the more serious cases are handled in higher courts, and it goes up.

Now, the range of courts helps to keep things organised so each case gets the right level of attention and care.

This is the structure of the courts, the civil and criminal.

So we start with the criminal courts.

We have at the bottom there the magistrates and then we're going up to Crown Court.

After Crown Court, we've got the court of appeal and then we hit our highest court of appeal, which is the Supreme Court.

And on the other side, we've got civil courts.

Now, the civil courts deal with civil matters.

So this might be things like divorce or custody issues that aren't criminal.

And again, we're starting the lower courts there.

We've got county courts, going up to the High Court of Justice, then have the court of appeal which takes you to the highest court there, the Supreme Court again.

So both the criminal and civil courts use a court of appeal and the Supreme Court in their court structure.

There we have again the picture of the Supreme Court and it is the final court of appeal for the UK criminal and civil cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Scotland do have their own.

They are responsible for interpreting UK law.

And as we said there, so Scotland has its own, the Supreme Court's role in Scottish cases is more limited.

Check for understanding there.

Which court is missing from the diagram? The court of appeal is missing there.

So that's the one just below the Supreme Court.

So we've got Jun here saying, "I'd like to visit the Supreme Court and see what it's like." Some courts in the UK require visitors to be at least 14, however the Supreme Court doesn't and it's also free to enter.

So they've got no age limit and it's free to enter.

So if it is somewhere that you wanted to go, you can actually go.

We have some different courtrooms in the Supreme Court.

So here you've got court one and this is mainly used for Supreme Court cases.

Just first glance there, having a look at how it's laid out, is that what you would expect that courtroom to look like? Thinking maybe if we see courtrooms on TV or you know, criminal courts especially, you kind of have the judge there, you've got the jury on one side and you've got both sides there arguing the points.

So really, what their main role is, is to make final decisions on how the law should be interpreted.

They're not set out by other courtrooms, because they want discussion amongst the justices about legal interpretation and they're not focusing on presenting evidence or deciding if somebody is innocent or guilty.

They are there to look at the legality of it and how that is interpreted.

So again, you want them to be able to discuss amongst them, hence that different shape of facing in and being able to promote discussion.

True or false? The Supreme Court determines responsibility in criminal cases.

That is false.

Why? So the Supreme Court does not decide guilt or innocence in criminal cases.

Its role is to hear appeals on legal matters.

So they set the precedence and clarify laws, but they don't reexamine evidence or determine the facts of a case.

Now, there are 12 justices and they are appointed by an independent selection committee.

They're not allowed to belong to a political party and they're required to have experience as a high court judge.

They are also only allowed to serve until 70.

So again, they're obviously not being allowed to belong to a political party.

We're keeping that separation of powers and you're making sure that they are experienced in what they're doing.

So the library at the circuit Supreme Court is the area that's not open to the public and this is where the justices and their assistants can quietly study.

So again, they are the top of the game.

This is the highest court.

Another check for understanding there.

So fill in the missing words.

We've got the Supreme Court is based in and is to visit.

It has various courtrooms and there are justices.

Did you get the missing words? So it's based in London and it is free to visit.

It has various courtrooms and there are 12 justices.

And a different courtroom here now at the Supreme Court.

So we've got court three.

Now, this houses the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the JCPC, and they hear cases relating to the Commonwealth, British overseas territories and Crown dependencies.

But the JCPC is actually the final court of appeal for other countries such as The Bahamas, Mauritius, Gibraltar, Falkland Islands, Guernsey.

We have the emblem there for the Supreme Court and this here represents the four jurisdictions within the UK.

So it's representing each area.

It can be found all around the courts, even on the carpets.

And you've got there the royal crown on top.

So it's showing that the monarch is the source of the Supreme Court's authority.

True or false, the government is the source of the Supreme Court's authority.

That is false.

Why is that false? Because it's the monarch and that's why the emblem has the royal crown at the top.

So what is the role of the Supreme Court? Now, what they are doing is they are setting precedents for lower courts.

So what they are saying is actually, "Okay, this is how it needs to be." So they're guiding how the law should be applied and what is gonna follow.

They clarify the law on issues that affect many people.

So they're there to deal with issues that will affect a large amount of people.

And the idea is that they make rulings or judgments on major political and business related issues.

So what they're there to do is make sure that laws are applied fairly and consistently across the UK.

So when we're saying they only hear cases that might affect many people, to give an example, so in 2019 during Brexit negotiations, Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised the queen to suspend parliament for five weeks.

And when the Supreme Court reviewed the case, they ruled the decision was unlawful, because then it would impact constitutional matters.

So what that meant was they said, "Actually nope, that's not the case," and therefore the MPs had to return to parliament.

Which of these are roles of the Supreme Court? Is it A, to set a precedent for lower courts, B, look at clarifying the laws that impact lots of people or was it C, to try serious criminal cases and deliver justice? It's A and B.

So the Supreme Court is a court of appeal.

So remember it's that case of reviewing rather than trying cases.

This moves us onto task B.

So the Supreme Court is committed to being open and accessible to the public so visitors can learn about its important role.

Your task is to create a start of a visitor's guide that will help someone come into the Supreme Court for the first time to understand its main roles.

Now, go as creative as you like with this one.

It's up to you how you do that visitor's guide.

The main aim here is that you can understand what the main roles of the Supreme Court are.

So if you take some time to pause here and then come back and we can feedback after and see how you found it.

So how did you find it? Now, your guide could look something like this.

Maybe you've got it over a few different pages.

So we've got on this one, "Welcome to the Supreme Court, the highest court of appeal in the UK," with a picture there of the Supreme Court.

Some information on the visitor's guide there is that the Supreme Court is the highest court in the UK.

It makes important decisions that affect everyone and helps set the law for the country.

What does the Supreme Court do? It sets legal precedents.

It makes rules that guide future court decisions, clarifies important laws, it looks at big issues affecting many people, like the 2019 case where the Prime Minister's suspension of parliament was ruled unlawful.

It handles major cases.

The court deals with important political and business issues.

This one here has got a third page there with the Supreme Court has 12 justices.

They're appointed by an independent selection committee and must have lots of experience, usually as high court judges.

The justices cannot belong to any political party, ensuring they remain impartial and they serve until the age of 70.

These justices work together to discuss complex legal issues and make rulings that can have a big impact the country.

We hope your visit helps you understand the Supreme Court's important role in UK law.

Now, that might have had the information in there that you were looking for in your guide.

Did you get something similar? Yeah, what kind of design did you come up with? Now, that brings us to the end of this session.

So we're just gonna summarise on what does the Supreme Court do.

So the Supreme Court was established to ensure a separation of powers between the executive, judiciary and legislative branches.

It took judicial responsibility away from the House of Lords.

The Supreme Court is based in London and it's the highest and final court of appeal in the UK for both civil and criminal cases.

The Supreme Court sets a precedent for lower courts, clarifies laws on important issues and makes rulings on major political matters.

It ensures laws are applied fairly and consistently across the UK.

Now, that brings us to the end of the session on what does the Supreme Court do.

Hopefully, it's given you a little bit of a better understanding and you know some of the main roles of the Supreme Court.

Thank you for joining me today.