How fitting that the last judgement by the Law Lords should have concerned assisted suicide, this season’s must have. Once the Supreme Court is up and running in the autumn, it will be like that of the United States, with appointments to it made on a highly politicised basis relating to issues such as this, wholly regardless of what the law actually is or isn’t.
After all, as with the US Supreme Court or the European Court of Justice, if a Supreme Court, being Supreme, says that something is the law, then it is the law, and that is just that. Just imagine what this would have done to the Attlee Government. Even statutes can be struck down, now that the judges in question are not themselves Members of Parliament.
On which note, it will no longer be possible for Lords Temporal (sitting for life, and so with nothing to lose) or Lords Spiritual (who I am told do this quite a bit) to bring flagrant injustices in the lower courts to the attention of their peers on the Bench, who then have the power to call them in.
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"Even statutes can be struck down"! Really? This development has gone entirely unnoticed by legal academia. I would like to know more.
ReplyDeleteA "supreme" court is not the same thing as an absolute court. Hitherto the House of Lords itself has been the UK's "supreme court". It is absolutism rather than supremacy that refuses to be bound by any law, including precedent.
ReplyDeleteWill, you'll notice it when it happens.
ReplyDeleteAnd Glorfindel, the whole point of a Supreme Court is that it can set any precedent it likes.