The moment when former Supreme Court justice, Lord Sumption, admits he broke the law. A little thread on one of the highlights from his convo with @JoshuaRozenberg last night, in a webinar organised by @BinghamCentre & @prospect_uk 
Asked if he thinks regulations made by parliament should be obeyed, Sumption says: "I don't accept that there is a moral obligation to comply with the law. I do think there's a civil obligation to comply with the law if you are satisfied with the way the law has been made."
Sumption: "I have certainly myself complied with the regulations until I came to the conclusion that they had gone on longer than even the government's own justification could support - when finally, I just stopped."
Sumption: "If you don't comply with the law, you cannot complain if you are fined, but are you committing a moral offence? I think not."
He didn't reveal which regs he broke, but decided he was "no longer going to comply with some aspects of the law at a relatively late stage", when the "levels of absurdity" showed the gov was continuing them to avoid admitting some aspects hadn't been a good idea to begin with.
Sumption: "I think you've got to accept that if you make that choice [to break the law], you may end up being punished and you can't complain about that - I'm talking about moral obligation, not legal obligation."
He accepted that intentionally encouraging others to break the law is an offence, but didn't accept that by publicly stating that he'd done so, he was guilty of such an offence.
Sumption accepted that a Supreme Court judge had a duty to uphold the law & set an example to others by doing so, but said as a retired judge, he is "simply a citizen" and has "no judicial obligations by virtue of what I no longer do".
Asked about lack of legal challenges to regs, Sumption said human rights advocates have been "extraordinarily silent about the greatest infringement on human liberty which any British government has ever attempted even in wartime" - putting entire population under "house-arrest".
Sumption warned that despotisms arise "not because our liberty is forcibly taken away by tyrants, but because people voluntarily surrender their liberty in return for protection from some perceived threat".
And said it's in the interest of government to exaggerate that perceived threat to procure compliance, adding what we have seen with the coronavirus regs is a "voluntary submission to an extraordinary regime, which to my mind has never been justified".
Sumption said: "My criticisms are directed at least as much against my fellow citizens as they are against the government. I think that an earlier generation of Englishmen would not have tolerated this - and I also think they would have been right not to tolerate it." [Ends]
You can now watch the full conversation between Lord Sumption and @JoshuaRozenberg, organised by @prospect_uk & @BinghamCentre, and supported by @JonesDay, on Youtube here:
