From the ECHR to the Supreme Court: judges vs politics

In recent years, courts have delivered numerous legal rulings on public policies that would have been seen in earlier decades as the responsibility of elected politicians.

Rulings on high-profile public policies have included cases on abortion in Northern Ireland, assisted suicide, Brexit, the prorogation of parliament and prisoners having the vote. Indeed, the government’s flagship Rwanda policy on asylum seekers has been kicked into the long grass for months pending legal rulings in London and Strasbourg.

Some see this expansion of judicial power as good, with the law standing up for fundamental human rights. Others detect a left-wing agenda that has turned judges into ‘enemies of the people’, according to one Daily Mail headline. Regardless, there is popular cynicism about overreach by, for example, the Supreme Court – some are even calling for the UK to leave the ECHR. On the other hand, critics have labelled such calls as ‘populism’, and fear politicians are accruing executive power at the expense of the rule of law.

So, where should the boundary lie between politics and law? Could it be that parliament itself, such as by passing the Human Rights Act, has pressed the law into areas where judges should not go?

Get your tickets to the 2022 Battle of Ideas festival here.