A group of 120 ‘top lawyers’ have signed a ‘declaration of conscience‘ stating they will not prosecute ‘peaceful climate change protestors’ and will ‘withhold [their] services in respect of supporting new fossil fuel projects.’
Predictably the tax specialist and founder of the ‘Good Law Project’ Jolyon Maugham KC is amongst the signatories, although the practical effect of his conscientious objection is limited. I’m pretty sure he has never prosecuted a criminal case in his entire career, and it would be remarkable if the CPS now decided to instruct him to prosecute a climate change protestor. The same can be said, it appears, for the vast majority of the signatories, who also include Tim Crosland, director of the environmental pressure group Plan B who was recently disbarred for deliberately breaching a publication embargo on a Supreme Court judgment. Another is Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC, a distinguished human rights solicitor and certainly someone who knows his way around a criminal court, but who at the age of 90 is unlikely to complete the soul-destroying process of joining the list of CPS approved counsel, on the off chance that he might then be sent a brief to prosecute a climate change activist which he could dramatically refuse to accept.
The self-righteous signatories of the declaration consider that this principle – the cab-rank rule – should not apply to them
The effect of the declaration to withhold legal advice to companies seeking to develop new fossil fuel projects is also likely to be non-existent.
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