Israel and the lawyers

SIR – Charles Moore (“Politicians, not lawyers, must decide our policy on Israel in the interests of Western security”, Comment, April 6) is right.

The letter to the Prime Minister condemning arms sales to Israel signed by hundreds of lawyers – including the former Supreme Court judges Lady Hale and Lord Sumption – seems another dangerous step down the path from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers. There have already been several such steps. The acceptance of jurisdiction by the Supreme Court in the Article 50 appeal in 2017, and especially in the Case of Prorogation in 2019, saw the advent of nakedly political intervention by the judiciary. On both occasions, this was manifested by improper judicial interference in the rightful exercise by the Government of prerogative powers. The weasel words employed by the Supreme Court to justify its legal solecisms could not disguise what it was doing.

Those judicial encroachments shattered the precedent, dating back to the 1689 Bill of Rights, that the courts cannot interfere in the government’s exercise of prerogative powers. Being a foreign policy matter, the approval of arms sales to Israel is another prerogative power, exercised by the Crown through its government of the day, and therefore not justiciable. Will the judiciary seek to ignore the 1689 rules again?

Precedent is the foundation of Britain’s unwritten constitution and its common law. In breaking precedent for political reasons, judges damage our constitution and bring our law and our courts into contempt. If judges persist in this practice, they should no longer expect to be self-appointing, as they largely are today, the Judicial Appointments Commission being packed with lawyers. They can’t have their bread buttered on all sides. Gregory Shenkman

London SW7