The lord chancellor’s response to the attacks on judicial independence has not found favour with the legal profession, notes Jon Robins
“Derry Irvine would have gone ballistic.” So tweeted the former Labour MP and barrister David Lock QC about the seeming equanimity of our present lord chancellor at the series of vicious and personal press attacks on our judiciary following the ruling of the High Court on the Art 50 litigation.
The Daily Mail’s shocking headline read “Enemies of the people” over enormous pictures of the three judges presiding over the case: the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas, Lord Justice Sales and Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton.
A number of commentators noted that the Mail’s front page shared the same headline, as well as an uncanny and disturbing similarity, with a 1933 German newspaper berating judges, also pictured, for attempting to defeat the “common will of the German people”. The Telegraph opted for a no less incendiary headline—“The judges versus the people”—and again ran photographs of the judicial trio prominently displayed.
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