... appeals in civil cases in the whole of United Kingdom and for criminal cases in England, Whales and Northern Ireland. Only the Lord of Appeal (Law Lords) - of whom there are 12 employed full-time take part in judicial proceedings. Sittings on the committee corridor are open to the public. Originally, the members of the House of Lords were drawn from the various groups of senior and influential nobility in Britain, who advised the monarch through out the country's early history. In the 15th Century the Lords Temporal became known as 'peers'. In the 18th Century Acts of Union with Scotland (1707) and Ireland (1800) entitled Scottish and Irish peers to elect representatives to sit in the Lords.2 Following the House of Lords act 1999 there are only 92 peers who sit by virtue of hereditary peerage (core membership of the House of Lords has historically comprised hereditary peers, that is ...

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