Our lady chief justice had some tricky waters to navigate when she addressed the Bar Council’s annual conference. While portraying her freedom to speak during the election campaign as ‘a visible confirmation of judicial independence’, she had obviously picked her material with care.
So, for example, Lady Carr made no mention of her previously expressed support for a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, lest it turn up in a party manifesto.
Instead, we had a beautifully crafted keynote on professional themes, such as the obligation to treat juniors properly. This she illustrated with the old yarn about the junior who for years faithfully composes his lead’s court submissions. So good is his work that the learned QC gets out of the habit of checking them before standing up before the judge. Then comes the day when the junior is nowhere to be seen – just a blank sheet in what should have been the skeleton: ‘You’re on your own now!’
However, by taking refuge in history, Lady Carr was able to make a gentle political point. This was to affirm the importance of the cab rank rule, by reference to fearless advocate Thomas Erskine’s address during the 1792 sedition trial of Thomas Paine.
One colleague was especially impressed. Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws revealed that she preferred the term ‘Erskine principle’ to the ‘cab rank rule’ as ‘increasingly cabs don’t want to take you where you need to go’.
Is Helena Kennedy KC really that scary?
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