Rise of the juristocracy

Who should we get to sort out our venal and cavalier bankers? It’s an interesting question. The Labour party wishes to inflict upon them a plague of lawyers, to use Jeremy Bentham’s apt expression, presided over by some bewigged and self-regarding judge. A judicial inquiry, then, which will end up costing the equivalent of a whole bunch of bankers bonuses and then some. The argument seems to be that the government, in preferring the inquiry to be carried out by parliamentarians, is affording the matter too little seriousness. Select committees are all well and good for the minor stuff, but such is the public outrage on this particular matter that the inquiry should be carried out at a higher level, a level beyond parliament. The body which makes the laws is not good enough, it lacks import; paradoxically, it is easily trumped by the body which does its bidding by administering those laws.