The English Did The Wrong Thing With the Lawyers, The Americans The Right

No one did Dick the Butcher of course and alas

One of the things the American right did - and thankfully a lot of it was the constitutional, near libertarian right which did - was pay a lot of attention to the lower layers of the Federal judiciary. I think it was the Federalist Society (?? You tell me) that went all out with the insistence that as the higher layers are all formed from those lower then by getting sensible people - defined as agreeing with us of course - into the lower layers then we’re going to swing, over the decades and a generation or two, the entire Federal legal structure our way.

They were right of course. That original Roe v Wade case might have been decided beautifully from a societal viewpoint (or not, as with your views on abortion) but it was definitely a really shit piece of constitutional law. It was activists bending the law to societal means. The sort of thing that really should have been done by the legislature or the legislatures. That’s why when they finally had a court made up of those for whom the law is a process not an outcome Roe was overturned with Dobbs. Which is good or bad societally as with your views on abortion but it’s bloody marvellous for the rule of law. The constitution says the Feds have bugger all to do with abortion therefore….

Over here in the UK we seem to have made the opposite - and thus worse - decision:

Now, whether that’s all entirely fair or not - and I’m also deliberately writing before the judgement is handed down so as to make the point I want to, not merely complain about the ruling - we now have a judiciary that is very definitely to the metropolitan left of the population. Who really do believe, as in the equal pay cases at Asda and so on, that it is the function of judges to decide what is fair and right, not to simply judge the facts of a case according to the law.

We have, in short, made the opposite mistake to the US. We didn’t pay attention to who was sitting as a Recorder, from whom the Circuit Judges are recruited and so on up the tree. Our immigration tribunal judges now near exclusively come from lefty chambers like Matrix. It’s also true that judges make a good whack by wider standards but a pretty poor one by those of the law (this is why their pensions are so ginormous, only way to get good lawyers doing it). So it tends to be the lefties taking the jobs not the vicious - and cleverer - righties who are all making £500k a year at the tax or commercial bar.

We’ve - absurd as it may seem - a lefty judiciary now. Simply because that’s where all the recruiting has been these past decades.

So, what do we do now? Well, my answer is remove most of that power from judges. All that fair, equal, as it should be and so on, bugger it. They get to run a trial and that’s that. Yes, this does mean leave the ECHR and all that. I’d happily leave the Council of Europe itself of course. And bugger the ICC.

But it is indeed true. In a way that the US fought against and successfully overturned we’ve allowed our judiciary to become a part of, be populated by the adherents to, the metropolitian left project. So, what do we do now?

Dick the Butcher had some ideas, indeed he did, but that is to be dealing with judges in pupae. We need a method of controlling the ones that are currently moths eating our liberties.

Any ideas?