Dr Lewis Graham’s new book Judicial Individuality on the UK Supreme Court finds that the judges sitting in the UK’s highest court take quite different approaches towards certain legal issues and their individual attitudes may affect the decisions of the court.
There are 12 permanent judges sitting at any one time. Of these, a smaller number – usually five – hear a case.
Dr Graham who is Fellow in Law and Director of Studies at Christ’s College says:
“It therefore matters a great deal who our judges are, and it matters a great deal how they think, because it matters a great deal what they do.”
The UK Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases, and for criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Founded in October 2009, the court hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance.
Dr Graham’s empirical analysis of cases heard over the first 10 years of the courts, looks at trends and tendencies across each judge's voting patterns and the reasoning they adopt when deciding an outcome.
Some judges, Dr Graham says, are more comfortable pushing boundaries while others are more restrained. Some grant the state a lot of leeway whilst others apply heavy scrutiny. This matters for our understanding of judicial neutrality, and judicial authority.
“The data shows that judges, like all of us, are human; it would be difficult to imagine that any of us, even in our most professional capacity, could act completely independently of our predilections, motivations and biases.
The same is true for the judges sitting on the UK's highest court.”
Dr Graham discusses his book in a podcast with Joshua Rozenberg.
