CBA Lecture: ‘Fairness and Judge-Alone Trials’

Speakers: Dr Matt Thomason & Dr Natalie Hodgson

The Criminal Bar Association is pleased to host a lecture on Fairness and Judge-Alone Trials, delivered by two leading academics whose research engages directly with the evolving role of the fact-finder across common law jurisdictions.

With the Government’s recent proposals to replace juries with judge-alone trials (JATs) for a large proportion of offences, one objection concerns the potential unfairness of JATs. In this talk, the speakers will draw on the comparative experience of similar adversarial, common law jurisdictions to describe and explain several ways in which fairness is impacted by replacing juries with judges. Some features of JATs may weaken fairness — for example, fact-finder exposure to inadmissible evidence — while others may be fairness-enhancing, such as reduced delays and the provision of reasoned verdicts.
This lecture will offer a grounded, comparative insight into how fairness is reshaped when trials move away from the traditional jury model.

Speakers

Dr Matt Thomason is an Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Nottingham. He researches and publishes on issues of criminal evidence and trial procedure, and has particular expertise in the law which regulates character and sexual-history evidence.

Dr Natalie Hodgson is a Senior Lecturer in Law in the Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney. She holds a BA (Criminology) / LLB and a PhD in Law from UNSW Sydney and, from 2021–2025, served as an Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Nottingham. Her research spans domestic and international criminal law, criminal justice, and criminology.

Event Details

Date: Tuesday, 13ᵗʰ January 2026
Time: 18.00hrs – 19.00hrs (60 minutes)
Format: Online lecture
Recording: A full recording will be available within a fortnight of the event.

The access link will be circulated at 14.00hrs on the day of the talk.