The announcement by Britain’s Labor deputy prime minister, David Lammy, also the justice minister, that there is “no right” to trial by jury in Britain is an astonishing and baleful development for the country that is the cradle of the common law. The proposal, which needs to be passed by Parliament, would retain juries only for murder, rape, and manslaughter. Most cases would be heard by a judge in an effort to thin out a backlog of some 80,000 cases.

The Times of London reports that Mr. Lammy’s memorandum explaining the proposal was marked “sensitive and official.” With good reason. The American Constitution commands that in “all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” The Framers learnt that from the English.

Juries were not unknown to ancient Athens and Rome, but they came of age in medieval England. Æthelred the Unready deserves some credit in readying England for juries, and it was the Assize of Clarendon issued by Henry II that codified what would become the grand jury. In 1215, Magna Carta’s 39th article ordained that “No free man shall be captured, and or imprisoned … but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”

The Times cites a criminal justice source as venting that “this is basically a Star Chamber or French justice.” The source could well have been the legal sage William Blackstone, who marked how the lament “that because Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberties, therefore those of England in time must perish” overlooked the fact that those formidable nations, “at the time, when their liberties were lost, were strangers to the trial by jury.”

Another source tells the Times that Mr. Lammy’s plan amounts to  “the biggest assault on our system of liberty in 800 years” and drives “a coach and horses through the idea that this government cares about ordinary people.” If implemented, the proposal could mean that some 75 percent of all trials will be decided by a judge. Mr. Lammy’s vision goes further even than an earlier proposal that would have dialed back the convening of juries.

The chairwoman of England’s Criminal Bar Association, Riel Karmy-Jones, calls Mr. Lammy’s plan an effort “to destroy a criminal justice system that has been the pride of this country for centuries.” She echoes America’s Declaration of Independence, which denounces George III “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.” Ms. Karmy-Jones blames “systematic underfunding and neglect” for the backlog afflicting Britain.

Mr. Lammy’s role hardly inspires confidence. The Tory shadow justice minister, Robert Jenrick, notes on X that in 2020 Mr. Lammy called jury trials “a fundamental part of our democratic settlement,” adding “criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.” Before Mr. Lammy was reassigned to Justice, he served as foreign minister, where he generally made a hash of things — forfeiting the Chagos Islands and wheeling on Israel during its war with Gaza. 

The falling into abeyance of Albion’s ancient liberties can hardly be a shock. At Munich earlier this year, Vice President Vance warned  that the “backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs … In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.” Thankfully those prerogatives and others, as old as the Plantagenets — if not Sinai itself — abide in America’s national parchment.