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So the consensus of lawyers is that we can't do better than a 300+ year-old law with a rag-tag of amendments, that it's impossible to have a negative rights based legal system, with the most important rights reinforced positively, and impossible to have those rights protected from arbitrary change (by self-interested politicians) by requiring such proposed changes to be passed by referendum (my choice - it's called democracy) or by a two-thirds majority of each house, only made permanent by a similar majority in the succeeding Parliament? Well I never thought our lawyers/politicians had been so clever! In fact, I've never seen much evidence for it in our general legislation.
Am I not correct to think that, before we got worked up about foreigners abusing our 'system', the State could go right ahead and skirt round or just ignore those negative rights, and wait to see if someone went to the expense of challenging them by proving their right, whereas with a positive right it is usually an incensed government that has to prove that it has not evaded the law, and if it fails to do so, depending on how incensed it is, try to enforce its will with one or more attempts at minimally compliant legislation?
If the Common, judge-derived Law, including the right to force our detainers to bring us before a court is so wonderful, how come we have a Mr Ahmad detained for ten years while we decide if that is justified or not? There are many lawyers who have turned their noses up in the Gazette at that rotten Common Law system in the US, where they do that routinely.
And in any case, all the judge will decide is whether the detention is lawful, with no interest in whether such a thing can be just, in the circumstances, let alone if ever.
Can both sides in this argument wake up to reality?