Obiter was privileged to be given a tour of the new Supreme Court building this week, and must admit to being impressed. No longer the dingy and dirty-stoned Middlesex Guildhall that some had muttered would not be an appropriate home for such a prestigious institution – though, you might say, neither was the previous anonymous room off a corridor in the House of Lords. The building is a light and bright mixture of old and new. The brickwork has had a thoroughgoing scrub and there are two ‘lightwells’ to lift the gloom, one of which is home to a canteen where presumably their lordships can pop down for a panino whenever they get a bit peckish. Original animal figureheads have been fixed onto new, more comfortable seating, while the building is designed to be welcoming to the public – it even has a computer inside where people can submit their own judgment at the end of a case and see whether it matches the findings of their lordships. Obiter wonders whether the lawyers involved will have had any more success at guessing the judges’ decisions than those who have just stepped off the Clapham omnibus.

Court one, which is the largest court, is very traditional, while court two is more modern and airy, but seats only seven judges. Neither court seems particularly suited to accommodate all eleven judges at once (as some have suggested should occur in big cases), unless they are very friendly indeed. The advocate’s room was originally fitted only with sofas – perhaps inadvertently revealing some­thing about the Ministry of Justice’s perception of lawyers – until chagrined barristers suggested that actually some desks might be quite useful too.

The building’s library was intended by their lordships to be a court, but it was impossible to move the balcony in this listed building, so it had to become home to the law books instead. All around the walls are a series of quotes chosen by the judges themselves. The Supreme Court press officer told Obiter the quotes get wittier the further into the library you go. ‘Law is order and good law is good order,’ said Aristotle. ‘Justice is truth in action,’ said Disraeli. ‘Laws were made to prevent the strong from always having their way,’ from Ovid. Insightful, perhaps, but not what you would call rib-ticklingly amusing. Still, perhaps the press officer was right in saying that it reveals something about the judicial sense of humour.