Legal Systems: Rule of Law

Lord Judge Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I shall not disclose confidential conversations that I have had with the present Lord Chancellor nor say anything that might lead to the impression that I am disclosing private conversations, so I shall be reticent. Instead, in six minutes, I propose to cover 800 years of history, and I hope your Lordships will see why.

We are going to celebrate 1215. We know what we are celebrating, do we? We are celebrating no punishment without trial, but deeply significant and frequently overlooked is clause 61, which states that the King is subject to the law. In the olden days the King made his oath and he accounted to God for whether he had obeyed it. As a result of Magna Carta, he had to account on earth. If he failed to obey the law as declared in Magna Carta, the barons and everybody else were absolved from their oaths of fealty. In the 1350s, due process was introduced. 1610 is the first time that I have found the rule of law actually appearing—it appears in the protest in the other place. In the 1670s, independence of the jury was established, and in 1689, the independence of the judiciary.

In the mean time, another strand was going on. 1616 was the year of the founding of Virginia, in which the charter provides—it is called the Great Charter—that citizens who went to Virginia would have the same rights there as if they were still living in England. And then, most importantly, in the early 1700s, a clear decision was made: unless the country had an existing system of law, whenever there was a new colony, British law would apply. Hence, in 1765, when Parliament passed one of the more foolish Acts that it ever passed, the Stamp Act, the American colonies decided that they had had enough and we ended up with a rebellion.

May I just pause? No punishment without trial; independent process for decision-making; due process; equality before the law; the rule of law—they were exported from this country. There are many facets of imperialism which are open to question, but if you were to go now, as I have been in the past few years, to the annual Commonwealth Law Conference, there gathered together are men and women, lawyers and judges, from the entire Commonwealth. They will criticise us for this and comment adversely for that, but the heritage of the rule of law is something for which they hold us in affection. When we discuss, as we do, the problems faced by other Commonwealth countries, or one or two Commonwealth countries or around the world, they look to us not in any sense of profound respect because we are British, but because, in a sense, we inspired some of these ideas which now matter to them.

It is not entirely accidental that, when you look at your television screen—if you do—to see the trial of Oscar Pistorius, the judge trying the case may not be wearing a wig, but she is wearing the identical robes that a High Court judge out on circuit trying a murder case would be wearing in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool or Cardiff. It is a very important living tradition in which the United Kingdom still holds high authority. I must add that the Australians think that they are now the repository of the common law. The Australians—I say with great respect to them—never fail to make a claim when they can. They think that our grasp of the common law has been weakened, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, by the contaminating effect of the European convention.

There is one point that I want to make which perhaps will not be obvious, on judicial training. This is one example, and it is only one, of the value of our system. We have visits from all sorts of countries to the Royal Courts of Justice. I do not mean a social; I do not mean looking around the building and having lunch with the judges; I mean a serious visit to find out how we do this or how we do that. The Judicial College, as it now is, welcomes people from all over the world who come to learn about training. More importantly, they ask the college to send men and women judges to train the trainers in their countries, or to train their judges. The topic, largely, is judicial ethics and conduct. The countries include Russia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Pakistan. This is part and parcel of the respect in which our system is held. It is comforting that the European Commission conducted a huge investigation into judicial training throughout the countries of Europe and came to the conclusion—it is a nice thing to be able to say—that the largest number of best practices were to be found in the United Kingdom and our Judicial College.

Can we please not take any of this for granted? The quality of our judicial training depends on the judges who do it. The quality of our entire system depends on attracting high-quality men and women to the judicial Bench. If we take it for granted, we will lose it.