Attacking democracy
Lady chief justice demands effective security for judiciary
Judges across many courts and tribunals have been subject to increasing — and increasingly unacceptable — sensationalist and inaccurate abuse, the lady chief justice of England and Wales said last night. Baroness Carr added that judges and sometimes their families had been subject to grave threats and intimidation inside and outside the courtroom, both online and in the physical world.
The judiciary had to be resilient, she acknowledged, but that did not mean they should have to tolerate such behaviour. More needed to be done to deal with what amounted to attacks on our democratic process.
She was speaking at the lord mayor’s annual dinner for HM judges, held at the Mansion House in the City of London. Turning to her fellow guest Shabana Mahmood, Carr said she looked forward to working with the Ministry of Justice “to ensure that the operational security taskforce has sufficient support and resources to promote effective judicial security”.
But that was only a starting point. “More will, no doubt, need to be done to effect a cultural shift away from such abuse and back towards the more reasoned scrutiny and debate that is a sign of a healthy and robust democratic society.”
In her response, the justice secretary and lord chancellor said she too had been appalled by the abuse judges had suffered. “No judge should ever be attacked for doing their job, said Mahmood, “and I will never stand idly by because there is no rule of law in this country without the men and women — many of whom are in this room — who uphold it each and every day.”
Those remarks were welcomed. But the massed ranks of the judiciary can be an unforgiving audience for an after-dinner speaker and recent justice secretaries have demonstrated that an overtly political speech will receive only polite applause from an estate of the realm that eschews party politics. Her joke about a Conservative predecessor fell flat, even though many in the room might privately have agreed with her.
Mahmood made up for it with a tribute to Lord Justice William Davis. As chair of the Sentencing Council, Davis had responded robustly — shortly before his sudden death last month — to what he saw as Mahmood’s interference with judicial independence.
“He was an exceptional jurist and a true servant of the law,” Mahmood said. “I had the deepest respect for him. The law — and this country — is poorer for his passing.”
Davis’s widow Ginny and son Ralph were welcomed to the dinner by the lord mayor of London, Alderman Alastair King DL. “We join you in mourning a fearless judge, a fine public servant, but much more than that, a good man,” he said.
In her own tribute, Carr said that Davis was “still very much in his prime, working as hard as ever right up to the day before he died. His contribution to criminal law was immense, particularly in the field of sentencing where his expertise was unparalleled. We miss him deeply, both as a professional colleague and a personal friend.”
She also paid tribute to the former master of the rolls Lord Etherton GBE, “a passionate supporter of access to justice”.
Addressing his guests, the lord mayor reminded them that the City of London Corporation was investing £596 million in a new justice quarter at Salisbury Square, roughly halfway between the Royal Courts of Justice and the Old Bailey. It will have 18 courtrooms as well as with a new headquarters for the City of London police.
But King also spoke of courtrooms further afield where English common law was fostering stronger, more resilient and less-corruption prone economies, boosting international trade and advancing the United Kingdom’s soft power.
He gave the example of the Astana International Financial Centre and its sister court in Kazakhstan. This, he said, was a common-law court operating at the highest international standards to resolve civil and commercial disputes throughout the Eurasia region.
All eleven of its justices are either former British judges or experienced British barristers, including the former lord chief justice of England and Wales, Lord Burnett of Maldon, who serves as its chief justice.
Its benefits were threefold, he said:
It strengthens the rule of law across Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
In doing so, it spurs economic development.
Nurturing stronger, more stable economies rooted in the rule of law means an increased number of reliable trading partners for the United Kingdom.
King disclosed that Judge Lucraft KC, the senior Old Bailey judge, had once acted as Cupid:
For it was at a judges’ lunch hosted at the Old Bailey by Mr Recorder that the lady mayoress and I first met during my term as sheriff, bringing new meaning to the phrase “judicial activism” and providing concrete proof that love really can blossom anywhere — even a judicial dining room.
“If a then 54-year-old lifelong bachelor sheriff can find love in a place that is so often associated with sadness,” said the lord mayor, “all sorts of good are possible in our British courts system.”
“ Baroness Carr added that judges and sometimes their families had been subject to grave threats and intimidation inside and outside the courtroom, both online and in the physical world.” One can only agree with the LCJ that this is intolerable. Not in her speech, but in previous comments elsewhere, the LCJ seems to have implied that judges had to leave their homes due to threats prompted by comments on a judge’s decision, made in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. She warned of the threat to the independence of the judiciary that might arise from such comments in the HoC. It does not seem to have occurred to our activist LCJ criticism of proceedings in Parliament by a senior judge might be considered a threat to democracy.
A number of thoughts clammer for my attention:
1. Much though many family members and fellow activists sneer at and even excoriate all such pageantry, for quite some years I have believed that we are where we are and that we need to use whatever tools may be at our disposal to strive for change for the better.
2. Both the LCJ and the Justice Secretary/Lord Chancellor - importantly and companionably sharing a platform-used the opportunity to support robustly our independent judiciary and to deplore its being held up to ridicule.
3. So glad that my good friend and eminent lawyer and Judge Bill (sorry, Sir William) Davis was rightly so lauded.
3. Whilst I remember the City of London is up to its elbows in nurturing the EVIL (word chosen with care) of offshore trusts and their ilk.
4. That aside , I worry ever more about the “push me-pull me” role of the Justice Secretary/Lord Chancellor where it offends grievously against the doctrine of the separation of the powers. I almost used the adverb “impermissibly”.
In the course of the same twenty four interval she can be seen and heard in her fiercely independent judicial guise AND/OR even in the one speech then segueing into her combative, party oriented and Cabinet level role to attack the opposition. AND what of collective Cabinet responsibility for crunch decisions taken within those portals where on moral or legal grounds she finds them abhorrent.? Am I worrying overmuch about this? It causes for example -I am going to say it- that excuse for a Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has no such qualms when seeking his personal advancement but then does that not rather reinforce my point.