If circumstances had been different, today I might well have been carrying out a Masters degree by research at my local Law School.
Several months ago I had some preliminary discussions about potential topics for the proposed Masters degree.
My interests lay in questions which others choose not to address.
One might say that I was proposing to explore areas where angels fear to tread.
One possible Masters topic was a critical examination of the process of judicial decision making.
A number of years ago I watched a YouTube video of the valediction of the then Supreme Court Justice Lord Walker.
The YouTube video is still there if you happen to be interested:
Lord Walker's Valediction
The point which is relevant to this post is the mention of a dictum of Lord Walker to the effect that a good judge identifies the correct answer to a legal question and then takes steps to provide support in his legal reasoning for that answer.
But what of a bad judge?
What of a biased judge?
Or a dishonest or corrupt judge?
Would he/she use his intellect and judicial discretion to, in effect, pervert the course of justice?
Could he/she use judicial discretion in such a disreputable (and criminal?) way?
I was already aware of situations where a judge had, in my estimation at least, used his judicial office to defeat the ends of justice.
I'll briefly mention some high profile cases where judicial integrity comes into question.
In the 1920s a High Court judge used his discretion to allow a mistress of the future Edward VIII to get away with murder, in order to avoid embarassment to the Royal Family.
In the 1960s judges in the Court of Appeal and in the High Court perverted the course of justice with respect to the case of Stephen Ward.
Among the corrupt judges was the then Lord Chief Justice and a future Lord Chief Justice.
I am aware of two further recent cases where I believe that current members of the judiciary have perverted the course of justice in high profile cases. At least that is my opinion.
If we put to one side the question of whether some judges are corrupt or biased, there remains the fundamental methodological question, "If there is no standard methodology how can "justice" be consistently achieved?".
My working hypothesis is that there is no way to be sure that justice is consistently achieved and, in any particular case, there is no reason to assume that it isn't possible for a judge (or even a group of 11 judges) to defeat the ends of justice.
The Masters research would have gone on to explore in more depth questions such as how judges could (and, in my opinion, do) use their discretion to steer a case towards a desired outcome.
Could the Supreme Court act in such an underhand way?
Of course.
There is, in my opinion, no reason to place unquestioning trust in the eleven Supreme Court Justices who are to hear the Brexit Appeal.
In fact, given the likelihood that the current Supreme Court includes some of the best legal brains in the country they collectively have the skillset to act improperly and frame their judgement so as to conceal their impropriety.
On the other side of the coin, one can ask if they would dare do so, assuming that they were so minded.
The Brexit Appeal is, in my estimation, the highest profile case to come before the highest court in the UK for more than a century. Probably ever.
All 11 Supreme Court Justices are to sit. It is said that such a number of justices sitting on one case is unprecedented in UK legal history.
If the 11 Justices get it wrong, and are seen to get it wrong, the lasting damage to the reputation of British Justice may be very serious.
The age of deference is a thing of the past.
The legal profession remains bound by a convention, at least while in active practice, that the integrity of a judge is not directly challenged.
But the public and the media have the opportunity to ask very direct and probing questions about the competence and/or integrity of judges.
I will, of course, be watching the Justices very closely given my interest in the methodological possibility of bias or impropriety.
On the other side I feel sure that the Daily Mail and others will likewise be looking for any evidence of bias on the part of the Supreme Court justices.
How the Supreme Court will behave in handling the Brexit Appeal remains to be seen.
Perhaps next year I will go on to do the Masters at my local Law school. Perhaps not.
For the moment, some of the important issues which interest me are on practical display at the Supreme Court.
The events of the next few weeks may provide me with rich pickings on which to found a Masters research degree.
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