Jonathan Sumption.
Trials of the State: law and the decline of politics.
Profile Books. 2019
Legislatures throughout the world are suffering from gridlock.
In democracies, new laws and policies are just as soon unpicked as made.
No one can achieve a stable consensus.
In the absence of effective politicians, the courts seem to offer a solution. Their rulings give definitive answers to tough political and moral questions.
However, as former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption argues, there is a price to be paid for passing these problems to the courts. Judges are supposed to interpret laws, not make them. And while decisions on issues of real public concern may seem to end the debate, in reality they just suppress it.
In a free society, there will always be conflicting interest and opinions. Sumption argues that only a political process can resolve these differences. It’s time to return some problems to the politicians.