Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Graham Zellick KC challenges judicial reticence on proposals affecting immigration adjudication, jury trials and the wider administration of justice.
Political neutrality does not require blanket silence, he explains. Existing guidance permits comment on threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, alongside technical and procedural consequences.
The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 also allows the chief justice to make written representations to Parliament on important judicial matters. Yet that power has never been used.
Zellick calls for a review of guidance now ten years old, distinguishing routine confidential discussions from considered public interventions.
The statutory mechanism should be treated as a useful constitutional tool, rather than a ‘nuclear option’.
Without informed judicial scrutiny, he warns, governments face fewer obstacles to putting problematic proposals on the statute book.
