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That is, how are judges in the UK appointed to cases in general and to this case in particular?

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how are judges in the UK appointed to cases in general?

The Resident Judge or the Presiding Judge of the relevant court allocates cases to their fellow judges. Residing Judges sit at specific courts (e.g. all Crown courts will have a Resident Judge). Presiding Judges oversee specific circuits (e.g. the Western circuit).

[how was the judge appointed] to this case in particular?

All extradition cases start off at Westminster Magistrates Court, therefore Vanessa Baraitser, the District Judge assigned to this case, would have been given the case by order of Emma Arbuthnot, the Chief Magistrate of England and Wales.

This is because the Chief Magistrate is the Resident Judge for that court, although in reality I presume she didn't personally make the decision to assign the case. The case listing system may simply have picked Ms. Baraitser as the next available judge to hear this case.

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    Good answer in general, but Do you think it really didn’t have human intervention in this case? Everything about this case has seemed to be quite irregular. Mar 26 at 4:21
  • I can't comment on whether it had human intervention as I simply don't know. It's entirely possible.
    – Matthew
    Mar 27 at 15:29
  • I was going to comment “good answer,” but I suppose my point was more to address your “presuming” that it was what came up naturally on the case listing system, my point then being that while that would seem certainly to be a fair presumption in nearly any other given case, but this case seems to have enough countervailing phenomena as to remove the rational grounds for such a presumption. You may find the disclosures of the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi (in particular her FOIRs to the CPS and the disclosed emails with Sweden) interesting on this subject. Mar 27 at 19:14

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