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Judges are never popular and nor should they be. However, absent the plainest evidence of partiality or professional incompetence they are entitled to respect. That does not prevent robust and reasoned disagreement with their judgments as judgments. Judges at the higher level do this to those lower sometimes.

Further, at least half of those who seek decisions from judges are disappointed at the outcome. That is unavoidable.

That is why the personal attacks on the three judges, who through no choice of theirs, had to decide the Article 50 issue is so worrying. Personal vilification does not advance the constitutional debate; rather it seeks to stifle it. In some regimes it might intimidate. Is that what we really want - a supine judiciary to do the power that be for the time beings diktats? Is the intention to cow the Supreme Court in advance? If so, whatever the outcome, it won't. Because to paraphrase Coke CJ to King James I when threatened in old age and ill health with the Tower, where most of the KB Judges already were for disobedience to the Royal Prerogative, " the Queen's judges will do what the Queen's judges have to do."

We later fought a civil war to make the supremacy of parliament beyond doubt.

Judges take their judicial oaths seriously. We should be thankful for that.

As I anticipate some antipathy to what I've written, I'll end with this.

A halfwit in a hurry could not take seriously an outfit that took 7 years to negotiate a trade treaty with a country a tenth its size, only to see it - if only temporarily- torpedoed by a few thousand Walloons; while at the same trumpeting its intention to create its own army. And yet, that same outfit (and its predecessors) has kept the French and the Germans (including the latter's ancestors) from one another's throats for the longest period since the French Revolution. And the worst consequences of that bellicosity happened when the UK was detached or semi-detached from Europe. Europe is now potentially a much more volatile place. Which is why I voted remain.

The Supreme Court's decision, whichever way it goes, is for them. And I will accept it, as that is our way - tried and tested.

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