BEING A JUDGE IN THE MODERN WORLD

Abstract

It is something of a modern cliche to cite the Daily Mail as an example of the more hysterical fringe of the mainstream press, but even by its own standards the newspaper reached new heights in the wake of the High Court ’ s decision in R (on the application of Miller and Dos Santos) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union . Despite the rather dry constitutional point that was actually in issue (whether the executive possessed a prerogative power to leave a treaty without Parliamentary approval) the Mail left no doubt as to its view of the case: ‘Enemies of the people’ screamed the headline, with the article going on to suggest that the claimants “had formed an 'unholy alliance' with the judiciary.” Clearly the position of even the most senior members of the judiciary is far from the distinguished isolation of previous centuries.