Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

@SBarrettBar @SteveBakerHW You’re muddling up the issue of independence with the question of what you call “politicisation”.

@SBarrettBar @SteveBakerHW I have never got anywhere near suggesting that the U.K. courts aren’t independent. And Rasmussen nowhere suggests that the ECJ isn’t independent.

@SBarrettBar @SteveBakerHW What I am saying - a point to which you have provided no answer - is that (as Sir David Edward explains in his article) neither the ECJ nor any other constitutional/supreme court can possibly avoid taking “political” decisions, in the sense that they involve “political” factors.

@SBarrettBar @SteveBakerHW As I have said, the idea (which you consistently advance) that there is a neat dividing line between legal reasoning and - impermissible - “political” reasoning is in fact incoherent, when pressed with cases such as those raised in my thread and Sir David’s article.

@SBarrettBar @SteveBakerHW But none of that is anything to do with judicial independence: a decision can be “political” both in its consequences & in the sense that the legal reasoning involves moral and political claims and judgments, without being in any way beholden to any politicians/parties/interests.

@SBarrettBar @SteveBakerHW Of course the Polish “Constitutional Court” is not independent at all - and is not a court in any meaningful sense. The Bundesverfassungsgericht certainly is both independent and a court. Another important distinction your article rather dropped.