The 2025 Leveson Review and Judge-Alone Trials

Part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts (IRCC) was published on 9 July 2025. His 45 recommendations include diversion, charging decisions, classification of offences, appeals, and guilty plea discounts. Some of the most significant and controversial recommendations concern the structure of the criminal court system and the modes of trial available for defendants. We begin this article by explaining Leveson’s proposals to expand the situations where a defendant (D) can be tried on indictment by a single judge. Known elsewhere in the common law world as judge-alone trials (JATs), the remainder of the article critically appraises this mode of trial, drawing on the comparative experiences of other jurisdictions to explore how Leveson’s proposals might operate in practice.