Tag Archives: Kate Malleson

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 led to greater judicial independence: politicians and parliament must continue to support it

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As part of an ongoing inquiry, the Lords Constitution Committee has sought evidence as to whether ‘the amendment of the role of the Lord Chancellor by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (CRA), and the resulting separation of powers between the judiciary and the Government, [have] been successful’. Robert Hazell argues that the 2005 reforms led to greater judicial independence, a political achievement that requires continuing support from politicians and parliament.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into the role of the Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers, in which it seeks to answer a number of questions, including whether ‘the amendment of the role of the Lord Chancellor by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (CRA), and the resulting separation of powers between the judiciary and the Government, [have] been successful’. Through written evidence, submitted with Professor Kate Malleson, I have attempted to answer that question. Our answers were based upon the main findings and conclusions of a three-year research project on the Politics of Judicial Independence, funded by the AHRC. The research explored the impact of the greater separation of powers introduced by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (CRA). Our principal conclusion – as explained in our 2015 book on the subject – was that judicial independence and judicial accountability have emerged stronger, not weaker; but that greater separation of powers requires increased engagement by the judiciary with other branches of government.

The changes made by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005

Until 2005 the head of the judiciary was a Cabinet minister, the Lord Chancellor. In an extraordinary breach of separation of powers, he could also sit as a judge in the UK’s highest court. The CRA removed the Lord Chancellor as head of the judiciary, handing that responsibility to the Lord Chief Justice in line with an agreement struck in the Concordat of 2004. The division of powers between the executive and judiciary was further refined in 2008 in a Framework Document for the management of the Courts Service (revised and updated in 2011 to incorporate the Tribunals Service). The CRA also created a new Supreme Court, and established the Judicial Appointments Commission.

The new politics of judicial independence are more formal, fragmented, and politicised

The old politics were informal, depending on regular meetings between the Lord Chancellor and senior judges; closed, in that these were virtually the only contacts between the judiciary and the government; and secretive, with both sides preserving each other’s confidences. They were also consensual and conservative, in that neither side wanted to change the system. The ‘new’ politics, by contrast, are much more formal. The CRA required more formal structures and processes to handle the relationships between more separate branches of government. We now have the Judicial Appointments Commission, Judicial Appointments and Conduct Ombudsman, and Judicial Conduct Investigations Office: all products of the CRA. The new formal processes include regular meetings between the judiciary and other branches of government, with the innovation of six-monthly meetings between the LCJ and Prime Minister, the introduction of regular meetings with senior officials in parliament, and annual appearances by the LCJ and President of the Supreme Court before the Constitution Committee.

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The merits of the judicial appointment process to the European Court of Human Rights

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malleson-photo-2010  Patrick Obrien

The selection process for the next UK judges on the European Court of Human Rights is underway. In this post Kate Malleson and Patrick O’Brien discuss the process and argue that elements of it should be adopted for the selection of the senior judiciary in the UK.

The process of selecting the next UK judges on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has begun. The vacancy has arisen because the incumbent, Judge Paul Mahoney, is due to retire in September 2016, when he will reach the court’s retirement age of 70.

The selection exercise for Judge Mahoney’s replacement involves a two-stage process: a UK stage and a European one. The UK stage, currently in train, involves a selection exercise to produce a shortlist of three candidates. This shortlist will be submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). At this second, European, stage, a sub-committee of PACE will interview the shortlisted candidates and make a recommendation on which should be appointed. Following this, in June 2016, one candidate will be selected for election to the ECtHR by majority vote of PACE.

Our primary focus here is on the UK stage of the appointment process. The Lord Chancellor is running the process on behalf of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and the process is being administered by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC). The Lord Chancellor has convened a seven-member panel, which includes a chair, two judicial members, three lay members and a legal member.

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Are quotas for judicial appointments lawful under EU law?

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A recent report laid out recommendations for improving diversity in the judiciary, including a quota system for women and BAME candidates. Kate Malleson and Colm O’Cinneide explore the legality of such measures under EU law, and specifically whether the quotas could be brought in under EU employment law or EU gender equality law.

In April 2014 Sadiq Khan, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, asked Karon Monaghan QC and Geoffrey Bindman QC to review the options for a future Labour Government to improve diversity in the judiciary. On November 6th their report, entitled ‘Judicial Diversity: Accelerating change’, was published. Starting from the premise that ‘[t]he near absence of women and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) judges in the senior judiciary is no longer tolerable’, it proposes a range of recommendations designed to speed up the glacial pace of change. Perhaps the most controversial of these is for the introduction of a quota system for women and BAME candidates. The report reviews the use of quotas in other UK institutions as well as their use in judicial appointments processes around the world, before addressing the question of whether such quotas would be lawful under EU law. This is a key question: EU law casts a long shadow in this context, as the Monaghan and Bindman report makes clear, given that any legislation enacted in Westminster to give effect to a quota system in the process of judicial appointments must conform to the requirements of EU law.

There are two stages involved in any legal assessment of the proposed quota measures under EU law. The first is whether holding a judicial office is classified as being ‘employed’. If the answer is no, then the question of their legality under EU law does not arise as appointments to judicial office will not fall within its scope of application. If the answer is yes, then the judicial appointments process will qualify as ‘access to employment’ which will bring it within the scope of Article 1 of the Recast Gender Equality Directive 2006/54/EC. This will mean that the use of positive action measures, such as quota systems, in the process of judicial appointment will have to conform to the restrictions on the use of such measures set out in the relevant case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU).

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Selecting the Justices: Four suggestions

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As the UK Supreme Court marks its fifth anniversary, Graham Gee and Kate Malleson reflect on how the process of selecting the Justices can be improved.

Earlier this month the UK Supreme Court celebrated its fifth anniversary. There has been a flurry of vacancies, retirements and new appointments during the Court’s first five years, with only four of the original Justices remaining on the bench. The next few years should (all being well) witness a period of relative stability on the Court, with the next mandatory retirement in 2016 (when Lord Toulson turns 70). A further flurry of appointments will follow in 2018, when five Justices reach mandatory retirement. The Court’s fifth anniversary is therefore an apt time to reflect on the process of selecting the Justices—and indeed we welcome the fact that the Court is currently conducting an internal review of the selection process.

The Court’s internal review has a relatively limited remit. It is largely concerned with the workings of the ad hoc selection commissions responsible for recommending to the Lord Chancellor candidates for appointment to the Court. Each commission enjoys some limited freedom to determine its own process, but within the parameters set out in statute. The Court’s review focuses on matters such as whether commissions should define merit, whether to interview candidates and whether candidates should make a presentation as part of the selection process. To tinker with the fine details of selection processes might seem a distraction when real and visible progress in securing diversity on our top court seems unlikely absent radical reforms such as gender quotas. There is some truth to this. In this blogpost, however, we suggest four changes to the workings of the commissions that would improve the way that our top judges are selected, even if falling short of the sorts of changes required to realise a genuinely diverse Supreme Court.

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