 |
| Owen Bowcott |
Brian Kerr, Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, who has died aged 72 after a short illness, was an energetic courtroom interrogator who became an ardent defender of the individual citizen’s human rights. The longest serving justice on the UK supreme court and a former lord chief justice of Northern Ireland, he was a progressive figure whose rulings advanced the rights of women and children and resolved controversies from the Troubles.
Along with supreme court colleagues, he found against the government in both Brexit-related challenges – over Article 50 triggering the UK’s departure from the EU in 2017 and the prorogation of parliament the following year. Of the prorogation case, he later told the Guardian:
The government’s position ought to be strongly tested … It was an intensely interesting case. I failed to resist the temptation to ask questions.”
He was most proud of the court’s 2018 ruling that eventually led on to the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland. With other justices, he concluded that the Northern Ireland assembly’s law on abortion was incompatible with human rights.
Continue reading @ The Guardian.
I was sorry to hear of Lord Kerr's death, he was a decent man. I had a great deal of faith in him when he was the NI Lord Chief Justice. The peace process gave rise to the notion of 'transitional justice' -the concept was a new high brow academic pursuit in the north's universities such that the average person would be baffled with its complex jargon. In reality in was nothing more than a novel new source for funding within the Universities. However, I could see pretty early on that Kerr LCJ was tranistioning the north's legal system from an oppresive and unfair legal system that favoured one community over the other. Under his chairmanship other judges like Mr Justice Weir and Lord Justice Girvan made astonishing judgments that were previously unimaginable under the old Carswellian regime. I credited Lord Kerr with putting transitional justice into action -none of the academics at the time picked up on it or related his managment of the legal system to the very concept they were researching. But families and individuals fighting for years in what are known as the legacy cases -they got a taste of what transitional justice was like -albeit it has now slowed to a standstill because MLA's could not keep pace with Lord Kerr's progressiveness. David Ford, Sinn Fein's choice of Justice Minister, blocked the court's and frustrated progress by withholding much needed funding that could have resolved a great many legacy cases by now.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that many during the Conflict saw a very different side of him that might not have been good experience, that aside -I think in some ways good judges were also victim to the Diplock System -because its function was never about justice but to put people away who the RUC said should be put away. The rules were not only designed to make it easier to get convictions but to constrain otherwise decent judges --some judges were just sectarian bigots regardless of the system -I think Kerr made good once released from his own Diplock sentence and he did the service of justice proud. I would always read Lord Kerr's contributions in Supreme Court judgments. In fact in watching some cases streamed from the Court he could sometimes be seen to formulate a plaintiff's argument into more concise and understandable language -that served to help his fellow judges understand better. He will be remebered as a great judge and perhaps one of the best that came out of the north of Ireland.
An interesting take Christy. Nuanced and more than the one dimensional view that many republicans take with their Manichean view of the world. It was largely due to him that our own case got to the Supreme Court. It ultimately failed on a matter of law.
ReplyDelete