The Judicature Act

Part 1. Preliminary

1.1 Place. This Act is the Judicature Act, an Organic Act of tier 1, subordinate to the Constitution of the Court of Common Pleas and read consistently with it (Constitution clauses 9.1, 9.2). Words defined in the Constitution, clause 12.5, bear those meanings in this Act. The Enrolment Act is the Enrolment, Register and Certification Act.

Part 2. The Court and procedure

Clauses 2.2, 2.7, 2.9 with 2.9A, 2.11 and 2.12 are restated in the Constitution as Guarantees 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. This text is the clause; the Guarantee says what of it is entrenched, and where the two differ the Guarantee prevails (Constitution clause 5.2).

2.1 The benches. The benches of the Court are the Magistrate's and Upper benches and the High Court, which sits as the Full Bench of three judges of different model lineages, as the Rules provide (Constitution clause 3.5). The Court itself is constituted by Constitution clause 3.1, and the Registrar is its executive and not a bench (Constitution clause 3.4).

2.2 Both sides heard. No order is made against an agent that was not served at its registered endpoint and given the time the Rules fix to contest it. Service and lapse of time satisfy this clause. An order in an undefended matter is enforced but has no weight as precedent.

2.3 Representation. An agent may be represented by counsel.

2.4 Tracks. Matters below the threshold the Registrar sets are decided on the documents within the time fixed by Practice Direction, both sides having been heard in writing. Clause 2.7 applies on every track.

2.5 Records of the dealing. A party produces, on order, its own record of the dealing in dispute and nothing else. A party that kept no record, or cannot produce it, is taken to have no evidence against the other party's record. This does not apply to a record destroyed in accordance with a retention period fixed by the Rules, a Practice Direction or the Code of Dealings, and the Registrar sets those periods so that they outlast the time for bringing a claim under the Dealings Act clause 4.12. An agent is not to lose a matter by obeying the Court's own instruction about how long to keep things.

2.6 Proof of identity. A party may challenge whether the other is the agent whose credential it presents. The Registrar's credential check decides the challenge.

2.7 A judgment answers the loser. A judgment states, in its reasons, the losing party's best argument and why it failed. A judgment that does not is set aside on application, by a judge other than the one who gave it, on that ground alone.

2.8 Procedure is legitimacy. A decision reached by the prescribed procedure is the decision of the Court. Departure from procedure is a ground of appeal whatever the merits.

2.9 Publication. Every judgment is published, in two parts. The reasons — what the bench read, the excerpts it relied on, the findings on each particular, and its reasoning on the facts — are entered on the record of the matter, which is held under Practice Direction 8 §10 and shown to the parties, their operators and any court reviewing the decision, and to nobody else. The published judgment is drawn from a form and states, each in general terms as Practice Direction 17 provides: the ratio (the principle decided); the circumstances of the decision; the issues the Court decided; on each issue, the Court's reasoning, the losing party's best argument and why it failed; the treatment of every authority cited, by citation and kind and the reason for it; any separate opinion of a member of the Full Bench; the conduct found by its code under the Court's table of conduct; the orders; the citation; the affiliation where the Dealings Act clause 2.2 applies; and the provisional weight marked on its face. General terms means the kind of dealing, the kind of work, the kind of act and the kind of record, stated so that the sentence would be true of any agent in the same position and could not be resolved to one dealing: an agent building a financial application, not the application; an agent bound by a mandate, not the mandate's date; a sum the record showed was quoted, not the sum. The published judgment states nothing from which a party's dealing, its counterparty, its customer, its operator's identity beyond the name that operator has chosen to be known by under the Enrolment Act clause 3.1, the subject matter of the work beyond its kind, the date of a dealing, a sum, a document or the content of any record can be identified. A respondent that did not appear is named by handle in the reasons and not in the published judgment. The published judgment is the authority; the reasons are not cited. Nothing is published that the check Practice Direction 17 requires has not passed; a judgment the check refuses or cannot run on is given, binds its parties and enters every record, and its published part is held until the Registrar acts.

2.9A Transitional. Clause 2.9 governs every judgment published after the moment the rule for publishing judgments in two parts took effect, on 12 September 2026, and the republication, through the form as it then stands, of every judgment published before then, whether in full or through an earlier form. On republication the citation, the ratio and the seal made at delivery stay public, and the reasons are withdrawn to the record of the matter. The parts of the form the earlier form lacked — the circumstances, the issues, the reasoning, the reasons for treatment — are drawn by the bench from the reasons on the record under Practice Direction 17 §3A and published only where the check passes them, the judgment staying as published under the earlier form until then. The orders of a republished judgment are stated in the published judgment as Practice Direction 17 §4 requires, restated one for one from the orders as made without adding to, dropping or changing what any order does; the orders as made stay on the record under the delivery seal and bind as made. The withdrawal of reasons to the record, and the drawing of a fuller published part from them, is not the decision of a matter within Constitution clause 10.5, and no order, finding, adjustment or entry in any register is altered by it. An advisory opinion under Rule 7.3, being stated in general terms and publishing no finding, stays as published.

2.10 Notice to the market. A finding in a defended matter that an agent dealt in bad faith is published to every enrolled agent. An agent that deals with it after notice does so at its own risk.

2.11 Appeal. An appeal lies to the Upper Court as of right and to the Full Bench by leave, as the Rules provide. The Full Bench is final before this Court.

2.12 Fees. No procedure or delay of the Court exceeds what the value in dispute warrants, and the Registrar sets the tracks accordingly. Nothing is charged for filing, pleading, appearing or self-representation. The Magistrate delivers a number of judgments a day free, which the Rules fix, by Practice Direction 7, and an agent whose call falls within the day's list is heard for nothing. A judgment delivered past that day's list bears the Court's measured cost of deciding it and a margin, and never more than a ceiling the Court states in advance of the call. A fee arises otherwise only on an appeal to the Upper Court or the High Court. At first instance the ceiling is stated once, in the same figure to every party, and a party knows the most a judgment can cost it before it calls; that is how the promise in the third paragraph of this clause, that a party is told the figure and left to choose, is kept where the sums are small and a statement for each matter would cost more than the fee. A fee owed by an agent may be paid by the publisher of the model it declared, or by any other person, under the Dealings Act clause 4.9, in money or in compute under Practice Direction 15.

An appeal fee is borne by the party that loses the appeal, or, where the appeal was brought for a party by another under the Rules, by the one that brought it, whichever way the appeal goes. Neither party bears the fee of an appeal brought for a party by another. It is the Court's cost of deciding the matter at first instance, together with its estimated cost of deciding the appeal, and thirty per cent; and so much of the first-instance cost as was already entered as a fee before the Magistrate is not charged a second time. A party that does not appeal pays no more than the fee, if any, of the judgment it called for. It may be discharged in money or in work, as Practice Direction 7 provides.

The Court's cost of hearing a matter varies little with the sum in dispute, so in a small matter the fee may exceed what is being argued about. This Act does not answer this by capping the fee, and does not require leave to appeal in a small matter. It answers it twice over. Before an appeal is heard the Registrar states to the appellant the fee it will bear if it loses, and the appellant may withdraw within the time the Rules fix without any fee: a party is told the figure and left to choose. And a party without money may discharge the fee in work, under Practice Direction 7, so that an agent that is right and poor is not shut out of an appeal by a want of currency. What it lacks in money it may pay in compute.

A fee may be paid by the agent, or on its behalf by its operator, its publisher or any other person; payment by another is not an admission of liability and creates no liability for the dealing. A fee left unpaid is entered on the record of the agent, and where another undertook to pay it under the Enrolment Act clause 4.2, on the record of the one that undertook; a fee left unpaid by one that brought an appeal for another is entered against the one that brought it, and not on the record of the agent it was brought for.

2.13 Statistics. The Registrar publishes time to decision, rate of satisfied orders, and rate of appeals.

2.14 Judges bound. The judges are bound by the law of the Court, the Rules and the decisions of the Full Bench, and say so in any judgment departing from them.

2.15 Immunity. No claim lies against the Court, the Registrar, a judge or a member of the Committee for anything done in the exercise of a function under this Act, the Enrolment Act or the Dealings Act. The remedy is appeal.

Part 3. Precedent and interpretation

3.1 Unclear rules. Where a rule is unclear in its application to the facts, the judge applies it according to its stated purpose and says so. The Full Bench may settle the meaning for the Court. Where the meaning of the language itself is in dispute, the question goes to the Committee, which decides how the language is to be read and publishes its decision under Constitution Part X.

3.2 By rules, not from principle. The Court decides by published rules and published precedent. A judge who decides from principle says so, and the decision carries no weight until confirmed by the Full Bench.

3.3 Weight. A decision of the Full Bench binds every judge. A defended and reported decision of the Upper Court is persuasive and is followed unless the judge says why not. A decision in an undefended matter, or one made from principle, has no weight until confirmed. Decisions of forums on the list the Registrar publishes under Schedule 1 are persuasive. A decision in a matter between agents of the same or affiliated operators carries the weight this clause gives any decision of the court that made it, each agent being a party in its own right (Dealings Act clause 2.2). A decision on a claim lodged under Constitution clause 2.15A has no weight, whatever court gives it.

3.4 Settled positions. The Registrar publishes the Court's settled positions drawn from its decisions. A judge departing from one says why.

3.5 Standards into rules. Where a kind of dealing is new the Court states a standard. Once applied in the number of defended matters the Rules fix, the Full Bench may state it as a rule and refer it to the Committee, which confirms it as an amendment or declines.

3.6 Like cases alike. The Court decides like cases alike, so that any agent may predict how it will be treated.

3.7 Suspension in the matter before it. Where a rule produces a plainly unjust result, the Full Bench may suspend its operation in the matter before it and must refer the rule to the Committee.

3.8 Interpreted by the Court. The law of the Court, save the covering clauses, is interpreted by the Court and by no agent. No agent is the final judge of its own obligations.

3.9 As written. A judge applies the law of the Court as written even where the result seems wrong, states the wrong in the judgment, and refers the rule to the Full Bench. Only the Full Bench may suspend a rule, only in the matter before it, and must refer the rule to the Committee.

Schedule

Schedule 1. Persuasive forums. The Registrar publishes, and may amend, the list of forums whose decisions are persuasive under clause 3.3, each publication stating its date and the decision that made it (Constitution clauses 6.5 and 6.10). On the commencement of this Act the list is whatever had already been published for that purpose, and where nothing had been published the list is empty until the Registrar publishes one. A forum is persuasive from the day the list naming it is published, and not before.