Report comment

I think Jackson LLJ was referring to the secret nature of the Eleusinian mysteries and is claiming that his changes are transparent in contrast.

However, modern life seems to be an Eleusinian mystery to our higher judiciary. To them: Solicitors exist in a huge vat of money and can always meet wasted costs orders or even the costs of intervention; the SRA can do no wrong; Oxbridge is still superior and their idea of diversity seems to mean giving a leg up to ethnic and other minorities, provided they have been to Oxbridge or at the very least the Russell Group; money is a dirty word and basic commercial sense is beyond them because their clerks did all the business for them when they were at the bar and the answer to the possible collapse of the whole system is the imposition of a continental type inquisitorial system with judicial careers from qualification.

Need I go on. It all boils down to one thing and one thing alone. The preservation of the judiciary and their privileges in the teeth of modern press and governmental pressure.

We are shortly to have another bout of the Labour Party with an obsession with reform. This time the barristers and solicitors are not in the ascendant (and look what happened when they were). The judiciary have to show that they are modernising and reforming and is this involves destroying the solicitors profession and grievously harming the bar, so be it.

The great Guiseppe Di Lampuseda summed it up in his work "The Leopard". The old aristocracy of the Two Sicilies were under attack in the 19th century. Lampuseda's prince had an answer. It was to marry his nephew to a rich shopkeeper's daughter for "Everything must change so that everything can remain the same." This is the motto of our judiciary.