Francis FitzGibbon

On one view, a placard in the street in front of a court building, visible to members of the public who may or may not be jurors, could hardly amount to an interference with anything; it might even give useful information – especially if a decision to acquit based on conscience really is a right that jurors have.

The Illegal Migration Bill (now in force as the Illegal Migration Act) was debated without the usual ministerial statement that it was compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The ‘statement of compatibility’ is a non-compulsory feature of the legislative process introduced by the Human Rights Act from 2000. Governments have dispensed with it only three times since.

‘Sir,’ Samuel Johnson said to Boswell as they toured the Hebrides:

a lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of the courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes.

Johnson expresses the rationale for the ‘cab rank rule’ that barristers continue to obey.

Common Sense: Conservative Thinking for a Post-Liberal Age was published in May by the self-styled Common Sense Group of around fifty Conservative MPs. Along with chapters on such themes as ‘What is Wokeism and How Can it be Defeated’, ‘The conservative case for Media Reform’ and ‘A Common Sense Model for Poverty’, are the reflections of two MPs on ‘The Judicial Activists Threatening Our Democracy’. The group has received favourable coverage from the Telegraph and the Express. Anyone who thinks that British courts have become a hotbed of anti-government ‘judicial activism’ should ponder two judgments given by the UK Supreme Court on 30 July.

The 1819 Seditious Meetings Act fell into disuse but remained on the statute book until its repeal by the Public Order Act of 1986. Now it is being revived in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. This monstrous piece of legislation is intended to make it a crime to do something in public that causes, or risks causing, ‘serious annoyance’ or ‘serious inconvenience’.