We have tended to greet changes in the criminal justice system with considerable sceptical trepidation.

But I have little doubt that as the years, or maybe the decades, roll on, we in Queensland will be urged to embrace reforms that have been in operation, effectively, in that great basin of legal tradition, Britain, for a decade or more.

Queensland's Chief Justice Paul de Jersey in an address to the Queensland Law Society Symposium calls for the consideration of legal reform in a number of areas such as allowing: an accused's previous convictions to be admitted as evidence, and judges to explain to juries what is meant by the term "reasonable doubt".

An edited extract of his address is available here (via Factiva).

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