Lord Chancellor's Department

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The Lord Chancellor's Department was a United Kingdom government department with jurisdiction in England and Wales. It was founded in 1885 as the Lord Chancellor's Office, to give the Lord Chancellor a staff answerable to him. It increased greatly in powers after the Courts Act 1971.

The Lord Chancellor until recently possessed the ultimate right to appoint judges to the judicial system of England and Wales. Following the passage of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 this is no longer the case.

In 2003 the Lord Chancellor's Department was subsumed into the newly created Department for Constitutional Affairs, which became the Ministry of Justice in 2007.

In Northern Ireland, the Lord Chancellor's department (with a lowercase "d") is the Northern Ireland Court Service.