Judge on Britain’s highest court

Johan Steyn, a judge on Great Britain’s highest court, who upheld the importance of an independent judiciary against creeping authoritarianism and who called the U.S. detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a “monstrous failure of justice,” died Nov. 28 in London. He was 85.

His death was first reported by Britain’s Telegraph newspaper. The cause was not disclosed.

Lord Steyn, as he was known after being elevated to Britain’s highest court in 1995, fled his native South Africa in the 1970s because of his opposition to apartheid, the country’s legally sanctioned practice of racial segregation. He came to see the law as a pillar against despotism.

In Great Britain, Steyn was acclaimed and sometimes vilified for his strongly worded decisions and public statements on matters related to international law and human rights. He opposed the death penalty, condemned executivebranch overreach and stood firmly for unfettered free speech. He also played a key role in creating an independent supreme court in the United Kingdom, separating it from its long-standing connection to the House of Lords.

“He has a terrier-like tenacity, deeply held convictions and the courage of a lion,” Anthony Lester, one of Britain’s most respected lawyers, told the Guardian newspaper in 2005.

Although English was not his native language, Steyn became known for an ability to express complex legal ideas in simple terms.

In 1998, he was part of a five-judge panel asked to determine whether Augusto Pinochet, the exiled onetime military leader of Chile then living in England, could be extradited to Spain to face trial. Pinochet had been linked to torture and murder in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s.

A lower court in Britain had ruled that Pinochet, as a former head of state, had complete immunity from arrest. In a landmark decision, Steyn was among the judges who overturned that argument by a 3-to-2 majority.

Pinochet’s actions could not be considered “acts undertaken in the exercise of the functions of a head of state,” Steyn said, any more than if he had been charged with “murdering his gardener.”

Steyn retired from his judgeship in 2005 and became chairman of Justice, one of Britain’s leading human rights organizations.