JUDGES VERSUS MINISTERS AND BOTH AGAINST THE PEOPLE

 

JUDGES VERSUS MINISTERS AND BOTH AGAINST THE PEOPLE

The article which I have reproduced below caught my eye.  You can see that the well-known legal commentator, Joshua Rozenberg,  is not happy that the Lord Chief Justice of England has not stuck up for the judiciary in the “debate” over whether judges are taking decisions which are ever more political and are therefore encroaching on the jurisdictions of Ministers and of MPs and of other politicians.  

 

From my point of view the interesting thing is that there is a complete failure on all sides to recognise that both Judges and Ministers and MPs have been busy encroaching on the proper rights of the People. 

 

So far as Judges are concerned, the representatives of the People that they have been encroaching upon over the last 50 years in various “reforms” to legal practice (in particular Civil Litigation), is on the rights of the People assembled as a Jury. 

 

Just as still in most cases in America that appear before the courts, the Juries decide what the outcome will be whether it is a criminal or a civil matter, so also from “time immemorial”, until recently, have Juries decided on cases in England. 

 

In times past, Juries would typically be the sort of people who would have had the vote in the days of the property qualification.  To some extent, that approach lasted up until the late 1960s when only rate payers could be called up for Jury Service. 

 

But it is worth remembering that it was juries which exercised a very important brake on the growth of State power and of misbehaviour by politicians and State employees and the judiciary itself.  They also exercised a brake on how overcomplicated the law could become. 

 

The besetting vice of Lawyers and of Judges is making the law and procedure ever more complicated. 

 

Now it is impractical for anyone, who is not prepared to spend an awful lot of time and effort on understanding all sorts of rules and regulations and civil procedural requirements, to actually bring a case, let alone to understand what the argument is going to be about when it gets to court. 

 

Before the Second World War most civil cases were dealt with by a Judge and Jury, with the Judge deciding legal points and the Jury deciding all the findings of fact and often deciding the damages to be awarded as well.  This meant that the law couldn’t get beyond the point of complexity that a Jury could sensibly understand what was at stake.  It also meant that Judges and, for that matter Barristers, had to be much better at explaining their arguments, otherwise the Jury would not necessarily understand what was being spoken about. 

 

Criticism (by Lawyers) is that Juries are unpredictable and that they tend to decide which of the parties to a case they like and that they focus on that rather than on dry legal points.

 

It is however a myth to imagine that Judges are very much more predictable than Juries.  Judges are rather more inclined to think that they know what is going on, but that means that they are quite likely to leap to conclusions, rather than to listen carefully to what comes before them.  Also, in particular, Judges over complicate the decision making process.  Once upon a time there might only have been two or three points of principle to consider.  Now there might be a dozen or more in a typical case.  So it is very difficult to predict, even for a lawyer in any complicated case, which of the points of principle the Judge will decide is decisive.  Therefore it is often just as hard to predict the outcome of a case before a Judge, as it would have been with a Jury. 

 

The law has been becoming ever more difficult to understand.  The original idea of the Rule of Law (which is that citizens can know where they stand, viz a viz State and each other) gets ever more lost sight of in a fog of complexity and bureaucratic rule making.  Add to that mix a toxic brew of political interference and faddist “reforms” and a legislature that thinks it is okay to produce in excess of 20,000 pages of new legislation every year!  No wonder nobody now knows what the law is, without spending time looking it up!  Often quite a lot of time!

 

The other point that is lost with the decline of the position of the Jury is keeping the Law in line with common sense. 

 

You do not qualify as a Judge or as Lawyer on the basis of common sense.  Legal exams are about academic ability and much of being an advocate is about being intelligent, quick on the uptake, rather than necessarily being somebody who is a person of good plain honest English common sense.

 

The lack of legal common sense has become more of a problem as the Judicial Appointments Commission was created by the Blair Government, in effect, more or less specifically, to exclude as potential Judges and Magistrates people who were just qualified by their common sense.  Instead the qualification has become a commitment to multi-culturalism (with the need to demonstrate a “life time’s commitment to Equality and Diversity).

 

The other point that occurs when you get rid of Juries, is that you get State employees, such as Judges, deciding cases, rather than ordinary people applying common sense. 

 

It is worth remembering that it was the Juries over the centuries that maintained English Liberty.  It wasn’t Judges, who were often willing and well paid instruments of tyranny. 

 

The most famous example of this was Judge Jeffries who actually sent a jury to prison for refusing to convict as he had directed! 

 

After the Glorious Revolution such judicial Jury tampering was made illegal.  For hundreds of years after that both Judges and politicians were restricted as to what they could enforce through the courts, to only what they could persuade the Jury to convict for.  The courts and politicians were also restricted as to how they could change civil law as whatever they wanted to do had to be something that Juries would find for. 

 

It was this common sense of Juries which was much more responsible for the maintenance of English Liberty than Judges. 

 

Looking outside of England it is worth noting that Law is often not the friend of Liberty.  A perhaps extreme, but nevertheless true example of that is that most things that Hitler did as Führer were legal!  Whether he could have got an English jury to have upheld his actions is worth a moments reflection.

 

It is worth remembering that the reason why the law on having a breathe test for alcohol on your breath when driving a vehicle (i.e. expressly not necessarily drunk driving) is a charge that is brought before the magistrates (who now are usually paid State employees, as “District Judges”, rather than the traditional upstanding citizen volunteer magistrate) is because English Juries had too much common sense to convict people of drunk driving who hadn’t caused any accident.  If people had, perhaps, had “one more for the road” than perhaps they should have done, but got pulled up by what many English people would have described as an over officious plod, then English Juries were often sympathetic. 

 

That is why the police no longer have to prove that you are drunk, merely that you failed a chemical test.  It is also why the decision was taken away from the Jury and given to magistrates - who will do what they are told! 

 

On reflection you will also notice that most of the more questionable offences which buttress multi-culturalism are magistrates only offences – that is not an accident!  If you are up before a District Judge there will be no application of common sense or of justice just of State Law!

 

Rather than tinkering with a legal rule here or there I would say what we really need is a massive reinjection of Juries into legal practice, but with the proviso that those eligible to sit on juries needs some serious pruning. 

 

The reform and re-imbedding of the English jury system needs to be an important part of any attempt to “get our England back” from Multi-culturalists and Internationalists and from the Globalist Liberal Elite!

 

Back to the article, when you read it you will hopefully reflect that the actions of both Judges and Politicians over the last 50 years or so have stripped away so much of English Liberty!  Here is the article:-

 

“Setting the boundaries of judicial review

By Joshua Rozenberg 1 June 2020

 

Why does the lord chief justice appear so relaxed about government plans to limit the scope of judicial review? Judging by his comments in parliament last month, Lord Burnett of Maldon (pictured) seems to support moves by ministers to shift the balance of power in their favour.

 

Our starting point must be the Conservatives’ election manifesto last year, which announced a ‘constitution, democracy and rights commission’ that would examine the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts and come up with ‘proposals to restore trust in our institutions’. The Conservatives promised to make sure that ‘judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays’.

 

Many judges would regard that as an accurate description of how they currently handle challenges to public decision-making. But the lord chief justice insists that his colleagues have nothing to fear from a reassessment of judicial review.

He first made the point in oral evidence to the House of Lords constitution committee on 13 May. Lord Hennessy, the historian, asked him a broad question about constitutional reform, mentioning the government’s planned commission but not referring specifically to judicial review.

 

Why does Burnett appear to be siding with Sumption in saying the courts have gone too far?

 

In what could have been a reference to Gina Miller’s Brexit-related challenges in 2016 and 2019, Burnett said quite a few people had become ‘aerated’ about what had been going on over the past two or three years.

 

‘One wants to be very careful about people who are aerated,’ he continued, ‘but what we do need to recognise is that the business of judicial review has grown substantially in the course of my professional career.’ It was now ‘a completely different beast’ from what it had been when he was called to the bar in 1980, Burnett explained.

 

But judicial review was a ‘construct of the common law’, entirely judge-made. Everyone familiar with public law could identify one or two steps that it would have been better if the courts had not taken. Yet parliament had never intervened to regulate its substantive rules.

 

‘And so measured and scholarly debate about the boundaries of judicial review is something which, in my view, is proper when looking at constitutional arrangements,’ the chief justice said. ‘It’s not something which the judges or the lawyers, with respect, should be frightened of.’ Indeed, they should welcome it, he thought, provided the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary were respected.

 

Burnett stressed the importance of these twin principles in evidence to the Commons justice committee on 22 May. They were ‘irreducible non-negotiable features’, he said. His point, presumably, was that it must always be for the judges to interpret and apply any legislation limiting their powers.

 

In the Lords, he was asked by Lord Howell of Guildford what he made of Lord Sumption’s claims that the judges were expanding their empire and becoming more activist. ‘Lord Sumption undoubtedly identified a serious and significant direction of travel that the judiciary had been engaged in, in recent years,’ Burnett replied. Because the Human Rights Act could be used in so many areas of litigation, the courts were being propelled into making the sort of value judgments that were alien to the ordinary judicial review process.

 

Asked the same question in the Commons by John Howell MP, Burnett expressed concern that people were confusing judicial review, which was judge-made, with human rights challenges, where judges were required by parliament to take account of the developing jurisprudence of the Strasbourg court. Don’t blame us, he seemed to be saying.

 

Occasionally, Burnett added, he would be updated on the government’s thinking on its manifesto promises by Robert Buckland. ‘No doubt the lord chancellor will be in a position to say something before long, perhaps,’ Burnett said cautiously. Plans for a royal commission on the criminal justice process, another manifesto commitment, were ‘much less well developed’.

 

What are we to make of this? Clearly, there must be limits to judicial activism: assisted dying and transgender recognition were examples Burnett gave of contentious issues he thought best left to parliament. We can also see that Burnett may be less willing to allow judicial review than some of his colleagues. In the prorogation challenge last September, his court refused to interfere with what he regarded as an ‘inherently political’ decision by the prime minister. Less than two weeks later, Lady Hale’s Supreme Court found the issue justiciable, overturned his decision and granted judicial review.

 

But why does Burnett appear to be siding with Sumption in saying the courts have gone too far? Is this a subtle move to blunt the lord chancellor’s knife? Or is he trying to protect his judges from public opprobrium by pulling them back from the precipice? Watch this space."

 

The original can be found here >>>https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/commentary-and-opinion/setting-the-boundaries-of-judicial-review/5104445.article

 

Petty bureaucracy trumps Justice in the Royal Courts

Lord of Injustice Jackson?

Petty bureaucracy trumps Justice in the Royal Courts

As a solicitor practicing in Civil Litigation and as a member (also past President) of my local Law Society, I attended an interesting talk on Thursday given by Matthew Harman, a Partner in the Costs Lawyers, Harmans Costs, Ardenham Lane House, Ardenham Lane, Aylesbury, Bucks HP19 8AA, who seemed very able and switched on talking about the effect of the latest fad of “Reforms” in Civil Litigation. These are known as the “Jackson Reforms”, after Lord Justice Jackson.


Lord Justice Jackson seems to be the very model of the sort of Judge that Derry Irvine and the Labour Party were keen to appoint during their years in office. That is to say he is very Statist in his philosophy about Law, he is very bureaucratically minded and evidently he is not very interested in Justice. That is with the meaning that “Justice” would mean to any right- thinking ordinary Englishman, whether he be (in the traditional phrase) on the back of the “Clapham Omnibus” or not!


Jackson also appears to have the very dogmatic adherence to the details of rules of a petty town hall bureaucrat. Indeed under the Jackson Reforms “Justice” has been redefined to be fundamentally about the administrative convenience of the Court and the State!


As part of this Statist mentality, the Courts are now supposed to “manage” cases. This is of course quite an odd concept, bearing in mind that most judges are former barristers and have therefore absolutely no experience of managing how litigation runs, let alone understanding the underlying economic realities or even for that matter of running or organising a normal business! Yet these same people are now expected to “manage” access to perhaps the most important function that a State has (with the exception of defence), I mean the Administration of Justice!


You may well have heard of one of the products of Lord Justice Jackson’s staggering lack of common-sense in the case of the wronged MP, Mr Andrew Mitchell of so-called plebgate fame, in which the police appear to have lied about what he said. In the Mitchell litigation the courts in their un-wisdom have now ruled that no costs can be recovered from the newspaper which libelled him!


Even worse in recent cases the courts are now saying that if you are even slightly late in putting in your witness statements then you are not allowed to have your witnesses give evidence at the trial!

Tacky looking EU style zip up gowns!

I am normally not one to rush to the European Convention of Human Rights, but with such respect as I can muster for the Lord Justices now wearing their tacky looking EU style zip up gowns and no wigs (therefore no longer looking like traditional English Judges that you could respect), this is a blatant and obvious breach of one of the European Convention’s cornerstone rights, the right to a FAIR TRIAL in which the parties have “equality of arms”.


In my time as a lawyer this is the third time that there has been a mad-cap attempt at a top down reform of the Civil Justice system. In each case it has been motived by Europhile enthusiasm, in particular for the German model of Civil Justice. On each occasion the “reformers” have missed the key feature of the German system which makes that system bearable to the people under it, which is that it is the DUTY of the Court to make the right decision and not of lawyers to do anything other than to assist the Court in making the right decision.


In England the opposite is the case and it is the solicitors’ and barristers’ job to present their client’s case as effectively as they can and the Judge merely in effect arbitrates between the cases that are put before them.

For such a Judge to take on supposedly managing cases with no experience in practical life of doing so, is not only simply absurd, but it inevitably leads to widespread miscarriages of justice.


As a lawyer I feel ashamed that the supposed leaders of our profession should have lent their names to these “reforms”. As a politician, it is yet another example of the contemptible incompetence of our political class that this travesty has been imposed by the laughably mis-named “Ministry of Justice”.


If there was real justice then the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, which is such a splendid embodiment of the Victorian respect for the greatness of English law and justice, should be renamed the Royal Courts of Bureaucratic Nit-picking – that is for as long as the Queen will want her Title associated with such a betrayal of our traditions!


But then, of course, for those interested in legal history, we should not be surprised that justice is not safe in the hands of careerist Judges.

In England the reason why justice and common-sense was preserved within our Court system over the centuries was because Juries decided almost all cases of fact and, if the law was likely to work an injustice, very often made their findings in such a way as to ensure that a just result was obtained.


Of course English juries were until the late 1960’s rate payers only, so bring back jury trials for more complicated cases we might need a process whereby a decision was made as to the appropriate level of qualification required of jurors that was related to the complexity of the case.