Exchange of the week The judges and Brexit

To The Daily Telegraph

Charles Moore suggests that judges who oppose Brexit, or whose family members oppose Brexit, are too biased to rule on the Article 50 case. Yet the High Court judgment in no way turns on the question of whether Brexit is a good or bad idea. Its focus is entirely on whether the Government can act by executive fiat to overturn individual rights created through an Act of Parliament, in this case the 1972 European Communities Act. All sides agree that this point of constitutional law is eminently justiciable. Based on centuries of historical precedent, the judges ruled that to remove such rights requires a fresh Act of Parliament. John Peet, London

To The Daily Telegraph

There is widespread alarm in the legal profession, as well as among the public at large, at the disclosures of the activities of the judiciary at Appeal Court and Supreme Court level in the matter of EU law and governance. It seems inescapable that those who will be trying the final appeal on who has the power to trigger Article 50 are themselves so involved as to raise the question of impartiality.

Whether or not that is a real issue, the old maxim that “justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done” is not being observed. The pronouncements of Lady Hale, one of the judges, before the Supreme Court even sits to hear the appeal, and the outspoken views of the wife of Lord Neuberger, president of the Supreme Court, cement the impression of pre-commitment. Peter St John Howe, Sudbury, Suffolk