In an era when transparency is paramount, the judicial appointments system, and the role of the Lord Chancellor within it, looks increasingly anomalous.
The constitutional position of the Lord Chancellor has looked shaky ever since the adoption of the European Convention of Human Rights, which requires a separation of powers between executive and judiciary, into English law in 2000: a stipulation that the current Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, who has a foot on almost every branch of the establishment, clearly breaches.
