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Of course the US justice system is politicised - overtly so: why else would there be such a fuss whenever there's a vacancy in the Supreme Court? And why are more junior judges elected?

Judges in the UK are politicised too, in that everyone is politicised, and they are no exception. I am sure all High Court judges strive to keep their political views separate from their interpretation of the law, and in large part they are successful (I include the recent Brexit rulings in that - the question framed was narrow in law, and it was perfectly possible for the majority of the judges to decide as they did without political bias).

Political bias may be present in the interpretive approach of judges - strict letter or purposive for example - and is one reason why, in the higher courts at least, odd numbers sit.

Most litigation practitioners will know that there are some judges who tend in one direction, and others who tend in another. Those perceived tendencies don't always result in predictable judgments, and most matters probably don't overtly engage any judge's political views. Furthermore, I should think most judges, whatever their political sympathies, are not sufficiently political to be ideology influenced all the time. But it must be one of the components in their overall thinking (or else they are robots).

The position in individual cases is not helped in that there can be more than one intellectually coherent judgment in any given case. A judge's political sympathies, along with the state of his gout, the birth of a grandchild, or how recently he looked at his pension forecast, will have some bearing on his thinking. However, it is in my view too much of a leap to suggest therefore that all judgments are 'political', and reflect the presiding judge's political bias.

Leaving aside that political considerations are probably rarely dominant in court cases, I am also sure that some judges at least will be conscious of any bias and may, if biased, lean the opposite way deliberately.

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