Our judges have become too big for their wigs as an increasingly powerful UK judiciary is now interfering in the political realm and even undermining the sovereignty of Parliament.
The introduction of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law, through the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA), has skewed the constitutional balance between Parliament and the judiciary in favour of the judges. It has bestowed unprecedented powers on them, as they must now interpret whether all law fits or breaches the HRA. Thus the HRA has given judges quasi-legislative powers under which unelected judges can effectively alter the law and second guess Parliament. It can even be argued that the HRA has semientrenched status as it allows judges to issue a ‘declaration of incompatibility’, requiring Parliament to revise any legislation that does not comply with it.
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