My Ancient & Modern column has banged on long enough about the glories of the only democracy the world has ever known: that of Classical Athens, where the citizens (Athenian males over 18) were the legislature, making all political decisions by a show of hands after public debate in the Assembly. However, those same citizens also sat in judgment in the courts, where there were no judges to tell them what they could and could not decide. So there was no separation of powers: Athenian citizens, being sovereign, could make and unmake laws at whim, if they could be persuaded so to do (and, on one famous occasion, they were, though they soon repented of it).
Since we are not a democracy, this separation of powers between government/parliament and the judiciary lies at the very heart of our system, a bulwark against the power of the oligarchic government elite that rules us.
The problem, however, is that the judiciary is an oligarchic elite as well, and not even an elected one. It is accountable to no one but itself, and a couple of recent cases as reported in the press (I stress that point) raise the question whether the judiciary in the appeal courts is serving the public properly.
In a recent judgment on a test case involving four ‘individuals’, the Supreme Court ruled that suspected terrorists whose assets had been frozen should have them returned immediately because government had no parliamentary authority to confiscate them. So government asked the Supremes to suspend the implementation of their decision, until it had got a law on the statute books. By a majority of six to one, the Supremes rejected the request: the Supreme Court ‘should not lend itself to a procedure that is designed to obfuscate the effects of its judgment’.
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