Judicial and silk appointments

The first report of the Commissioner for Judicial Appointments published on 7 October, found that the system remains opaque, is poorly understood, unduly slow and lacks a proper audit trail, which means that equal treatment of candidates cannot be demonstrated. The fact that there were only 10 complaints from more than 3,000 unsuccessful candidates must be considered in the light that people may not complain through fear of harming their careers. The report casts some light on the processing of applications for silk. On the last round, 4,700 comments were received and those for each candidate collated into a single document.