Splendid news
The British equivalent of the American Supreme Court and the Italian Constitutional Court is the judicial section of the House of Lords, where sit a number of the most senior judges in the land. A judgement is usually given by a majority of five of them. Today, however, no less than nine - the maximum, I think, allowed by procedure - rendered their judgement on the Blair Government's monstrous Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows the detention of foreigners without trial or limit of time. By an 8-1 majority, they struck it down as contrary to the European Human Rights Treaty, to English common law principles, and to mere decency. Some of the judgements went very far in trying to make sure that the Government could not simply cobble this abortion with a few extra provisions and put it back on the statute book. Just yesterday - what a coincidence! - the Home Secretary who was associated with this obscenity resigned over a largely personal matter; one over which, honestly, he should not have bothered.
I am sensitive to the problem of judiciary imperialism - very visible in both North America and Italy - where judges take it on themselves to rewrite constitution and laws and even to act as an opposition party in the State; but this shows why any kind of reform of the judiciary is to be approached with the utmost caution. This is simply justice in operation against the excesses of the legislative and executive branches. There are people who have spent three years in British jails because of this villainous Act, and rumours that some of them went mad from lack of hope. No matter what the danger from terrorism (and please remember that yours truly grew up in Italy in the nineteen-seventies, when terrorism was on the rampage and apparently unstoppable), there are things that a democracy simply cannot do for any reason. If it means we lose, we lose. If it means we die, we die. But to become as bad as the terrorists would be worse than to lose to them, and to become so corrupt that we eagerly accept obvious injustice and obvious violence would mean that we are already worse than dead.
I am sensitive to the problem of judiciary imperialism - very visible in both North America and Italy - where judges take it on themselves to rewrite constitution and laws and even to act as an opposition party in the State; but this shows why any kind of reform of the judiciary is to be approached with the utmost caution. This is simply justice in operation against the excesses of the legislative and executive branches. There are people who have spent three years in British jails because of this villainous Act, and rumours that some of them went mad from lack of hope. No matter what the danger from terrorism (and please remember that yours truly grew up in Italy in the nineteen-seventies, when terrorism was on the rampage and apparently unstoppable), there are things that a democracy simply cannot do for any reason. If it means we lose, we lose. If it means we die, we die. But to become as bad as the terrorists would be worse than to lose to them, and to become so corrupt that we eagerly accept obvious injustice and obvious violence would mean that we are already worse than dead.