On the surface the debate looks like a face-off. There’s pragmatism, which says, ‘Forget juries for sentences under three years, and realise complex fraud trials are beyond a jury’s comprehension’; and then there’s principle, which says, ‘The jury system is foundational to our whole understanding of justice.’ But in reality, principled opponents of change point out that, according to a think tank, only 2 percent of cases may be affected while pragmatic proponents say justice is about more than a set-piece trial. Beneath the surface lie further dynamics like the nature of a legal career and the lack of people wanting to become judges.

Above the Old Bailey stands a bronze statue of Lady Justice. Personifying justice implies it’s an absolute – that justice can definitively be arrived at, whereupon other blessings will follow. But justice is not an abstract goal – it’s a set of conventions, arrived at through striving for social order and well-being.

Pure justice is an idol; there’s very little that’s pure about human relations gone so badly wrong as to involve the courts. Justice is a system, not an ideal; a best attempt, not perfection. Establishing good conventions is the heart of justice. Those conventions, far from being luminous and eternal, are always in need of updating.

But that moment of refining is a very sensitive one. Because conventions, whether in law or in any other institution or relationship, rest on something more fundamental. And that fundamental quality is trust. Criminal cases arise when the trust that underpins all civilised society has broken down, and it seems a person has acted in a way that undermines the confidence we place in one another to function and interact together. Justice is a process by which that trust can be restored, involving a balance of accountability, judgement, punishment, mercy and rehabilitation.

When the psalmist says, ‘Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long,’ he’s saying well-being lies in a balance of giving each their due, which in his case includes giving God God’s due. But to create new conventions, that work for victims as well as authorities, means recognising that justice is about restoring trust, in the system – and in one another.