Igor Judge is a Maltese-born English judge and has been Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the head of the English judiciary, since October 2008.
Recently, I criticised the trial judge in the following case.
"Two men have been jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder...Neither of their Facebook posts resulted in a riot-related event".
More recently, I was astounded when their sentences were upheld by the Court of Appeal. Incredibly, Lord Judge stated that the excessive sentences were justified because people were appalled to read what they had written. Sometimes I am appalled by what I read in the Daily Express and Daily Mail. But that does not justify the editors of those newspapers being jailed for 4 years.
Yesterday the Daily Mail stated "Judge Judge, on sentencing and the right of Britain to look after its own affairs, is a voice of sanity. He must be heard".
Now I am no psychiatrist but I would suggest that Lord Judge suffers from a dose of insanity.
On the other scale of justice Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe recently gave a speech at the Conference on the Prevention of Human Rights Violations.
"We have to speed up progress in turning human rights principles into reality. The rights proclaimed and agreed to are too often not met in the everyday lives of Europeans. After having visited most member states, I am aware of the disappointment felt by many and remain impatient about the shortcomings in fulfilling human rights obligations.
All states encounter challenges in their work for the full realisation of human rights. It takes time and effort to develop a culture of respect for human rights. Scarce resources are often invoked as the main obstacle. Conflicts, corruption, racism and intolerance are other barriers to progress. Even without such hindrances we know that human rights are never fully implemented. There will always be improvements to be made. One reason is that minimum requirements change with economic and social developments.
Politicians have a responsibility – the implementation of human rights principles is largely a question of political will. It is unfortunate that key concepts and the language of human rights have often been politicised and demeaned in political discourse. It also happens that government politicians object strongly when shortcomings in their own countries are exposed by mechanisms set up to verify the practical implementation of agreed standards. Yet those responsible have in all cases an obligation to demonstrate the political will to address the identified problems.
We have to be systematic about human rights work. The objective is to build a society which takes human rights seriously: a society which endeavours to ensure that all its members can fully enjoy their rights. This requires a systematic approach for the prevention of violations and the implementation of the agreed standards".
For arguments sake, let's just say instead of winning Hirst v UK (No2) before the ECtHR I had lost the case. Then I come back to Blighty and say to Lord Judge you don't have to follow the ECtHR judgment please rule in my favour. I suspect he would have given me a very small measure of British justice and informed me that he had to follow the ECtHR judgment.
Lord Judge is giving a classic example of the politics of the judiciary. Time he stepped down.
"For arguments sake, let's just say instead of winning Hirst v UK (No2) before the ECtHR I had lost the case. Then I come back to Blighty and say to Lord Judge you don't have to follow the ECtHR judgment please rule in my favour. I suspect he would have given me a very small measure of British justice and informed me that he had to follow the ECtHR judgement"
ReplyDeleteExactly. They use clever-sounding, but empty arguments to ride a coach and horses through the 'rule of law.' They try to justify what they want rather than defend what the law says.
'British justice' is increasingly looking like just a romanticised myth.