Be Ye Ever So High the Law is Above You!

A constitutional revolution quietly took place last August . The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords (also known as the ‘Law Lords’) left the neo-gothic corridors of the Houses of Parliament to take up residence in the new Supreme Court located just across Parliament Square, in the refurbished Middlesex Guildhall. Some legal commentators are concerned that this ‘separation of powers’ will lead to an unhelpfully adversarial relationship between the government and the courts. Others are more sanguine. They believe that it will promote a more independent and robust judiciary.


As a young barrister, I regularly met the great judge, Lord Denning, who was fond of quoting his distinguished predecessor Lord Coke, Lord Chancellor under James I: ‘Be ye ever so high, the law is above you’. Equality before the law is a key principle of the English legal system. In theory at least, the rich and the powerful are as subject to the law as are the weak and the vulnerable. Fairness is another key principle, as the very recent death of that doughty campaigner against ‘rough justice’, the late Sir Ludovic Kennedy, repeatedly reminded us. The development of the English legal system is really the story of how the powers of the king and the ruling elite were gradually made subject to the rule of law.

The English legal system has deep roots in the biblical tradition. The concern for justice and the welfare of the vulnerable and marginalised is a major theme in the writings of the so-called “eighth century prophets” , such as the prophet Amos who was active in the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century B.C. Amos was a passionate critic of those who manipulated the legal system in order to achieve their own selfish ends through corruption and thwarting of the due processes of law. This subversion of justice was a travesty, not just because such behaviour was wrong in itself, but also because God had called Israel into being in order to embody and exemplify God’s own justice.

A good system of justice recognises that all human beings are of equal moral and political worth. A poor system of justice leaves the weak at the mercy of the strong, and our own legal system falls short to the extent that delay and cost deny justice to weak and poor. The language of human rights developed in response to the Nazi savagery against minorities and the vulnerable during the Second World War which began 70 years ago. Even if we think this language is currently being abused or taken too far, it is meant to affirm that all humans have a dignity and worth above and beyond the ordinary scale of human values.