Too powerful?

Lord Dyson, Master of the Rolls, considered the question of, “Are the judges too powerful?”, in a speech to the UCL Bentham Association last week. He offered an interesting response to Lord Sumption’s recent assertions on the subject of judicial powers in his Kuala Lumpur lecture, and said he regretted that judges had “descended into the arena” of arguments over the European Court of Human Rights, giving an impression that the “entire judiciary” was critical of it. This impression had been created by “a small number of lectures given by a few senior judges”, who had not claimed to speak on behalf of their colleagues.