Justice -v- Legality

[Warning: No reinsurance content]

There’s a difference between the two, of course.  Today, it rather looks as if justice took a back seat to ‘legality’ in the Lords.

First, they approved the extradition of computer hacker and self-styled ‘bumbling computer nerd’ Gary Mackinnon to the US.  Officials there are said to wish to see him ‘fry’, though on infers not literally.  Perhaps they’ll just stick to waterboarding.

Second, they find that the SFO Director, Robert Wardle, acted ‘lawfully’ in stopping their investigation into the BAE/Saudi alleged corruption affair, though Lord Bingham did have the wit and grace to say that “whether his decision was right or wrong was not at issue, rather whether it was one he was lawfully entitled to make.”  And he was, apparently.

You get the impression that they didn’t much like coming to the view they did, but then again the 5–0 verdict tends to show that they had little choice.  I wonder how the Court of Appeal got it so ‘wrong’.

Not the English legal system’s finest hour, one thinks.