New rule of law centre?

Former judge wants to reinstate lapsed academic post

A former senior judge has called for the creation of an Oxford centre that would sustain and enhance the rule of law.

Sir Ernest Ryder was a lord justice of appeal in England and Wales from 2013 and senior president of tribunals for the United Kingdom from 2015. He retired from the judiciary in 2020 to become master of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Sir Ernest Ryder (right) with the high sheriff of Oxfordshire, James Macnamara at the University of Oxford’s examination schools

Delivering the high sheriff of Oxfordshire’s annual law lecture in Oxford last month, Ryder called for a revolution in strategy and delivery that would positively impact on people’s perceptions of the rule of law.

“We don’t teach our citizens much, if anything, about the rule of law and we don’t encourage participation other than through jury service and our dwindling magistracy,” he said. “The public are estranged and that is a democratic deficit. The court estate is a national disgrace: in part literally crumbling and, more to the point, not fit for purpose — either from the perspective of those who work in it or the users and victims who have no choice but to be there.”

Parliament had invested political and judicial leaders with constitutional and statutory responsibilities, Ryder observed, but had not done enough to make the justice systems work effectively. “We are all adversely affected by institutional decline,” he said.

Ryder, a senior associate at the University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, advised the Commons privileges committee ahead of its finding in 2023 that the former prime minister Boris Johnson was in contempt of parliament for deliberately misleading the House of Commons. He also advises the Scottish government on its ministerial code.

The former judge gave two examples of statutory protections that had turned out to be insufficient:

• the Miller 1 case decided by the High Court in 2016, when three senior judges were accused of being “enemies of the people” for deciding that legislation was needed to trigger Brexit. “The lord chancellor at the time, Ms Truss, was widely criticised for failing to respond in a timely or appropriate fashion,” Ryder recalled. “It is easy to forget now the acute attack on the rule of law that this represented.”

• the Unison case, decided by the UK Supreme Court in 2017, when a trade union challenged a decision taken in 2013 by the then justice secretary Chris Grayling to increase the fee payable by some applicants for employment tribunal hearings from nil to £1600. “Whether the fees order was an attempt to reduce backlogs and/or an attempt to increase funding by making litigants who could not afford to pay do just that is not the point,” said Ryder, who was operationally responsible for the tribunals at the time. “The [Supreme Court ruling] was perhaps the strongest defence of the rule of law delivered in modern times, condemning government for its illegality,” he added. But if Unison had not challenged the increase, he questioned whether the judges would have been able to do so.

“Wouldn’t it be good,” suggested Ryder, “if someone had the overarching non-political role of identifying to parliament and government unfairness that ought to be redressed.”

He envisaged the role being taken by someone who could bring together the conclusions of ombudspersons on maladministration, systemic unfairnesses uncovered by judges and the recommendations of inquiries that had been accepted but never acted upon. It would be “someone who could identify solutions to delay, unintelligible process and, most importantly, circumstances where people are unequal before the law and have no access to justice”.

Ryder saw this as a job for an academic, referring to the post of professor of justice systems at Oxford University. That position was held until 2021 by Chris Hodges, a former City of London solicitor and regulation expert who came up with the idea of introducing legislation to clear wrongly convicted Post Office staff and persuaded parliament to enact what became the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024.

His university post was privately funded and lapsed on his retirement in 2021, though Hodges remains emeritus professor. Ryder called for the post to be reinstated as part of a “centre that brings us all together with a bold public agenda”.

He made no mention of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, which has a director and researchers in London but no professor of its own. Last October it hosted a lecture on the rule of law by the attorney general. Oxford already has the well-established Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.

Ryder said that Oxford colleges like the one he headed would offer the new rule of law centre a home — but it would need financial support. “Who among us here is going to help by funding a place that sustains the rule of law by regenerating our institutions with innovative but principled ideas,” he asked.

“The delivery of hope and imagination is a vision that this university proudly supports,” Ryder concluded. “But the time to act is now.”