PalenQ

Recently while walking in front of the Houses of Parliament i noticed a billboard saying that the 'new U.K. Supreme Court building' would be built here.

Whilst not an expert on U.K. stuff at all i was taught in school that the U.K. did not have a Supreme Court and that the House of Lords acted in that role?

Please clarify - and it seems that any new building in this area must be scrutinized greatly to blend in with what i think at least, the Houses of Parliament are some of the most sublime architecture in the world.

flanneruk

Having a legal system that worked wasn't good enough for B Liar and the millions of hangers on who'd shared Chambers with him back in the days he was pretending to be a barrister.

So they decided to change it. Out goes the fuddy-duddy House of Lords as the ultimate appeal court - except, of course, as a place B Liar could get cash from his supporters to be appointed to. In comes the new, dynamic, Supreme Court. Which obviously isn't the same thing as the US Supreme Court: not even B Liar could convince himself the people's elected representatives should be subject to a bunch of supperannuated lawyers second guessing whether a load of slave-owners might have approved propsed legislation.

The Supreme Court simply becomes the ultimate determinator of what legislators meant when they passed the law concerned. England's always had something called the Supreme Court, but its role was highly technical.

I don't think there's any serious new building: it's a refurbishment of Middlesexs Guildhall, in Parlioament Square.

PalenQ

Thanks flanner:

And how will the judges for the new Court be appointed

If by party in charge you'd end up with an all Labour court right?

Will Queen, dare raise that spector, appoint say some from Labour, Tory and Lib Dem (or Scot or N'eire parties)

seems a conundrum how to appoint the justices?

Once there there how long a term - unlimited like ours (daft - i'd say a max of 15 years or so) and once you have a court yes then the party in power can appoint as vacancies occur and that would be the will of the people, kind of

flanneruk

Judges don't have political affiliations - and given the role of the Suprene Court, their political views are close to irrelevant. Unlike America's weird system, we don't let unelected judges tell politicians what the law should be. At the top level, their role is simply to determine what the law dictates.

Judges (including the Law Lords who act as a Supreme Court today: the full House of Lords has no judicial role) get appointed by allegedly dispassionate committees. Since appointees serve till retirement, there's routinely a reasonable balance between the prejudices of judges appointed 15 years ago and those appointed last week.

There's a bit of an inbuilt bias among Law Lords (and their successors will doubtless follow) to seeing themselves as crusaders against the Executive (sort of English for Administration), and for greater transparency and accountability in Executive decisions (it's wonderful how far courts can stretch Common Law if they're not shackled by a constitution and a nit-picking obsession with the small print of statutes).

If anything, judges who looked when they were barristers to support the party currently in power tend to give the Executive a harder time than those who seemed on the other side. But excessive partisanship as a barrister usually excludes lawyers from top judicial jobs.

PalenQ

Again thanks

and i only wish excessive partisanship were not A REQIREMENT for U.S. Supreme Court and various federal courts.

It used to be more like the U.K. bent you describe - more the law and not interpreting it in a partisan way

The role of the President in appointing Supreme Court and other court justices is one that is often overlooked in our Presidential elections - the judges they will appoint can have a huge impact on the nation - to wit abortion, gay marriage, business regulation and a thousand things that usually folks rarely think about - instead voting on more tawdry issues like who you pastor was, etc.

Indeed our Court even intervened in the democratic process and appointed a President in 2000, on a strictly partisan 5-4 vote - ignoring the majority's longheld States Right philosophy.

I do admire the U.K. system of government in many ways - esp the legal system as i now understand it.