The slippery concept of the rule of law is still worth fighting for, says Roger Smith
Some things don’t change. When JUSTICE was formed in 1957, the country was recovering from a disastrous military intervention—the Suez Canal war. Elsewhere, the rule of law was abused to justify the detention of enemy combatants. One of JUSTICE’s first acts was to send observers to a treason trial in Pretoria and a show trial in Budapest. The launch of a manifesto on the rule of law during JUSTICE’s 50th year is a fitting mark of the organisation’s inheritance.
The manifesto was launched at a meeting, on 16 January 2007, co-sponsored by the Society of Conservative Lawyers, the Society of Labour Lawyers and the Liberal Democrat Lawyers Association. It received support from speakers such as Lord Goldsmith QC, Dominic Grieve MP and Simon Hughes MP. It attempts to set out the values that governments should accept as matters of constitutional principle.
They should:
adhere to international standards of human rights;
uphold the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession;
protect the right to fair trial and due
process;
champion
