5th September 2021
Bless the justices of the supreme court of the United Kingdom.
As you may be aware, there has been a substantial – and amusing, even embarrassing – disclosure under the freedom of information act of documents relating to the departure of former supreme court justice Jonathan Sumption.
A pdf of the disclosure is here – and it rewards being read in full.
I was alerted to this disclosure by this thread from Adam Wagner.
Some detail (via @gabrielquotes) on the question I have been wondering about for a few months – why Lord Sumption is no longer on the Supreme Court supplementary panel. https://t.co/TGrX7Mo0kb https://t.co/1o43RFOL9L
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) September 3, 2021
Lord Hodge to Lord Reed upon hearing about Lord Sumption's resignation:
"That is a relief" pic.twitter.com/styJ1TIqug
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) September 3, 2021
And Joshua Rozenberg has set out a characteristically detailed post about the situation on his blog.
My post is just a footnote to the disclosure and Rozenberg’s post – from the perspective of a former central government freedom of information lawyer.
And, in summary, the footnote is: bless.
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By which I mean no disrespect to the justices of our supreme court.
Quite the opposite: they should be cherished.
For they must be the only senior public sector officials who comply with the freedom of information act in the spirit in which the legislation is intended.
Senior figures at any other public body would have worked with their freedom of information officer to invoke cynically any exemptions to delay and/or block publication.
Indeed, most senior figures in public bodies would not have been so naive as to create things which are capable of being FOId in the first place.
If the freedom of information act worked as it was supposed to work than the sort of disclosures we now have from the supreme court would be commonplace throughout the public sector.
But it isn’t, because it doesn’t.
The freedom of information act is, in effect, an ornament not an instrument.
There is not real sanction for non-compliance or evasion – and any appeal will take years to get anywhere.
It is almost impossible to have disclosure from a public body against its will.
And it is actually impossible to do it short of years’ long process of appeals.
Everyone concerned knows this.
And non-disclosure letters from public bodies are the most dismal, unconvincing and insincere documents produced by public bodies.
Nobody produced in the production, dispatch and receipt of a freedom of information non-disclosure letter has any sincere belief in the contents.
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A bit like pizzas, in a way:
Source: The Onion
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The supreme court, bless them, has taken the scheme of the freedom of information act seriously – and thereby taken the rule of law seriously.
Good on them.
For even though there is no real risk of sanction – nor even compulsion – the supreme court has followed the act, and it made potentially embarrassing disclosures properly.
More than (yet another) ponderous extra-judicial speech about the ‘rule of law’ this disclosure by itself shows how the supreme court takes the rule of law seriously.
As a supreme justice once averred in another context: that is a relief.
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Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated.
Comments will not be published if irksome.
Write a post critical of the Supreme Court – and there will be many comments, including some earnest ‘why are you being so negative’ and ‘you don’t understand’ fusspottery
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Well, that does not mean that it was not interesting.
I think there is a related question about the appointment of judges with opinions or attitudes that are well known, certainly to their fellow-lawyers, and often to the wider public.
Jonathan Sumption is a very clever man and a fine historian, I am not qualified to assess his abilities as a lawyer: but the way that he speaks his mind has clearly been difficult, and some of his views on the virus are extreme.
Other obvious examples are Denning, and Harman (both the older and the younger Harman). I know of the younger Harman, when a silk, mouthing “silly old fool” at a judge – behaviour that was a pointer to the way he was after elevation to the bench.
Judges do not need to be bland, but they should have tact.
actually this is one of the best articles I have ever read. I have had the privilege to have a known a few former Supreme Court Justices socially, and they always struck me as among the finest human beings I had ever met, and a courtroom still seems to me the last place in the society where sanity and order are the rule, rather than the exception.
Thanks for highlighting this. Refreshing but no less than expected from the SCOTUK. The quality of their questioning and opinions on the prerogative and proroguing were excellent and educative, dare I say of a higher standard than the normal SCOTUS perhaps because it is less obviously selected as a political football.
Sumption is always good value although I found his “freedom” stuff almost deliberately provocative. His Reith Lectures made it clear his reservations about the role of SCOTUK (and SCOTUS) so recusing and subsequently resigning is consistent although one does wonder how much he was pushed to the final step.
I suppose you have few comments because of the old adage that misery sells.
This must be a case of actually eating your pizza and yet still having it. Pizzarism!
And, yes, it’s true that misery sells but why we must always remember to remember the good!
Good doesn’t “sell” because there is nothing to debate or finesse; we’re all happy but that’s not much of a comment.
or maybe because economium is harder to write (well) than invective