It was all too familiar and depressing to read Grania Langdon-Down’s article on becoming a judge (22 June). Her interviewees made no mention of selecting the best candidates for the job to serve the public, or the need for the best judges to do the best job for our people.  Instead there was only the usual multiculturalist nonsense about diversity and tokenism – regardless of merit. 

The article about court bundles (22 June) was again all too familiar to litigators. Anyone with any understanding of economics knows of the danger of ‘supplier capture’ of rule-making.

Judges now think they are within their rights to make the rules on how big the bundles will be, simply in order to limit the amount of work they have to do. They are not, it seems, focusing on what should properly be their job, which is doing justice between the parties.

It seems that we need an update to fiat justitia ruat caelum (let justice be done though the heavens fall). Perhaps that should now read: ‘Let there be at least some sort of a decision, as long as the judiciary be diverse and the bundles don’t take too long to read, regardless of whether the decision is right or wrong.’

Or is it like the interminable recorded message at a dodgy call centre ‘hotline’ endlessly and insincerely repeating: ‘Your case is important to us’?

R C W Tilbrook

Tilbrook’s Solicitors, Ongar, Essex

 

 

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