Unelected judges are giving in to the temptation to make up new laws

sir – As a retired academic lawyer, I agree with Professor Richard Ekins on the deficiencies of Britain’s Human Rights Act (report, December 28). He writes of legislation that, when added to a remorseless rise in judicial review, risks conferring too much power in a parliamentary democracy to unelected judges.

The judicial role has traditionally been to interpret and develop existing law, rather than create new law. But a human rights charter, by dint of its very nature and the penumbra of uncertainty surrounding the meaning of its words, invites the latter.

And, if judges accept that invitation, on matters such as abortion and euthanasia, to mention but two such controversial “human rights”, are they not trespassing on issues that should be the province of elected politicians answerable to Parliament and voters?

Lawyers with wider, political ambitions can, as many have always done, seek election to Parliament. John Kidd

Auchenflower, Queensland, Australia sir – Lord Howard (report, December 29) wrote that judges are “distorting” the law for their own ends “to reach the result they want to achieve”.

A few days earlier, Charles Moore (Comment, December 21) wrote that “the ancient doctrine of the independence of the judiciary really means the independence of judges from all exterior influence and from the influence of one another”.

On the issue of the prorogation of Parliament, all 11 judges of the Supreme Court – supposedly the best “independent” legal minds in the land, who rarely all sit to judge a single case – without a single, even slightly nuanced difference between then, in a 57-page judgment, “distorted” the law in exactly the same way. It is often the case in written judgments of this court, usually with a smaller number sitting, that a dissenting, minority opinion is also published.

This is proof positive that these Supreme Court justices have failed Charles Moore’s tests of independence; they have worked for a political outcome, colluding with one another, without a single dissenting opinion.

They sacrificed their independence to a higher political “result they want to achieve” and in so doing have brought themselves, the Supreme Court and the law into disrepute.

Does independence in the minds of judges simply mean freedom from scrutiny and freedom to exercise a power grab with impunity? Has the former absolute power of the monarch been substituted with the absolute power of the judiciary?

These questions need answers, but how? The usual method of judicial inquiry clearly will not do.

Dr Kevin M O’sullivan

Plymouth, Devon

sir – We elect MPS to act, despite their flaws, as we can hold them to account. Others are immune from our displeasure. It’s time to shout this aloud and roll back some of the past 15 years’ constitutional changes. Tony Narula

Wargrave, Berkshire