Michael Howard, the former leader of the Conservative Party, this week claimed that “more and more decisions are being made by unaccountable judges”. Essentially making the ‘green light’ argument that judicial intereference with politicians’ decisions should be limited in scope, Lord Howard said: “Judges are unaccountable and unelected and ought to be very reluctant indeed to set aside decisions of this kind”. He was speaking as a group of local authorities were launching a High Court challenge against the Government’s controversial decision to axe Labour’s multibillion-pound Building Schools for the Future secondary school rebuilding scheme.
The formation of the coalition Government has seen a number of high-profile legal challenges to key policy decisions; for example the claim that the new tuition fees scheme breaches human rights and an unsuccessful bid to overturn the emergency budget. (The UK Human Rights Blog claims that even the Supreme Court seems a little confused on the question as to whether it can “overrule” Parliament). As well as the accountability of judges, such challenges also raise the question about the background of judges, and the roles that religious, cultural or political beliefs might play in the decisions they reach.
