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I'm sure it is right and lawful that a power to intercept communications for public safety must not jeopardise legal privilege.

What I don't understand is why so many lawyers think that, if a decision is right and lawful, then it doesn't matter which court makes it. The UK government denied the jurisdiction of the CJEU over security matters, only subsequently to be over-ruled by that court. That much made the court's jurisdiction strictly lawful – but not necessarily legitimate. It is strikingly unreasonable that the supreme court of a trade bloc has the final say over legislation protecting a nation's security.

Whatever good is done here by protecting our right to privacy is balanced, or even outweighed, by the destruction of our right to be free from courts to whose jurisdiction we do not give consent. Even the wisdom of Solomon would be vitiated if it were over-reaching.

Human rights laws, like any laws, are valid by virtue of their ethical and rational content, *and* by virtue of the political legitimacy of the court that makes and applies them. Too many lawyers seem to have forgotten that second necessary condition, and they are culpably dismissive of the harm that their omission is doing to law's standing.