Essential listening from @ProfMarkElliott on @attorneygeneral’s recent speech.
https://twitter.com/profmarkelliott/status/1450767634807537669
One point made well: the claim that it is somehow illegitimate for those who have “lost the [political] argument” to assert their legal rights is highly peculiar.
Take a case where a local authority, having entered into a contract eg to allow an organisation wanting to hold a conference to use its premises, decides (after a highly charged but fully democratic vote) that it doesn’t want to honour the contract.
Would the organisation be condemned by the AG if it tried to enforce its contract? Does she think that the courts should slam their doors to such a claim?
The “politics by other means” complaint doesn’t usually contemplate that sort of case. Which rather shows that the heart of the complaint isn’t really about overstepping the law/politics mark.
Rather, it’s a complaint about the existence or content of certain kinds of legal rights: rights that those making the criticism tend to regard as over-extended, less important, or even objectionable - at least when invoked against a government they support.
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