>Eighteen barristers, including six king’s counsel, have signed the declaration. They will now self-refer to the Bar Standards Board for breaking the profession’s “cab rank” rule, which specifies that a barrister must take a case they are qualified for, provided they are available to do so.
Fair play to them, they could have just said their diary was full and refused to take the cases on.
Just a shame that it seems there is no place for morals in the legal world.
Absolute disgrace, they should all be disbarred. It is not the place of lawyers to determine which crimes are prosecuted or to decide any group is immune to the law. What happens next, they start to decide what crimes they won’t defend because ‘it goes against their morals’?
Then how do they explain it when they defend someone who is a murderer or rapist, and as their lawyer they know they are guilty, but defend them anyway? It seems they forgot how to be lawyers, at least selectively, to score some cheap social media points.
I’d swear that I saw a tweet from the Secret Barrister that said none of the barristers in this list are on the Crown Prosecution Service panel and so aren’t allowed to prosecute anyway…
This might be another helping hand to push the boulder down the hill of public opinion changing in favour of climate protesters and direct action to stop catastrophic climate change. If the top lawyers for the King and courts say “No, this is wrong, we should not be prosecuting people who are protesting peacefully” then they either make them all redundant which would cause absolute furore or they swallow the pill and realise that these new protest laws are unenforceable if they are not able to prosecute individuals for protesting peacefully. It might just force the government to back down on such a stupid piece of pearl clutching legislation…
Surely that just means the more scumbag lawyers that are dishonest and twist the truth will do it instead. Which will probably lead to more of them going to jail than less.
Right?
Surely the top lawyers should be representing the peaceful protesters instead of doing nothing.
Didn’t realise KCs were prosecuting these people in magistrate courts.
Philosophically speaking, does signing this declaration not make them unqualified to prosecute “peaceful climate protestors” anyway? Hard to violate a rule that requires you take cases you’re qualified for if you’ve already stated that you are biased against the case to begin with.
Sounds nice until someones gran dies because the ambulance couldn’t get to them on time due to being stopped by some pricks that had glued themselves to the road
Ridiculous, day by day the rule of law means less & less
Unless they are causing harm to people or property. Why should they be imprisoned?
So many people here more outraged by the lawyers actions than the fact we lost our right to peaceful protest that made this a supposed crime in the first place.
One of the cornerstones of democracy, taken away from us by rich dick heads, and yet boo those who take a minor bloody stand for it!
Climate change is about to be irreversible. Stop worrying about legality.
While obviously barristers should not be picking and choosing who they prosecute, the lawyers named in this article are not on the Crown Prosecution Service panel and so are not allowed to prosecute anyway.
>Jolyon Maugham KC, the head of the Good Law Project and a key signatory of the declaration, says: “Like big tobacco, the fossil fuel industry has known for decades what its activities mean. They mean the loss of human life and property – which the civil law should prevent but does not.
>“The scientific evidence is that global heating, the natural and inevitable consequence of its actions, will cause the deaths of huge numbers of people. The criminal law should punish this but it does not. Nor does the law recognise a crime of ecocide to deter the destruction of the planet. The law works for the fossil fuel industry – but it does not work for us.”
I think we’re increasingly realising this is an existential threat and how little we are able to do without courageous political leadership or audacious protests.
Regardless of one’s stance on climate change, it really isn’t the place of the judiciary to decide on whether laws are moral enough to be enforced. That is reserved for the legislature and the legislature alone. Any attempt by the judiciary to refuse to prosecute people based on the laws as passed by parliament is fundamentally undemocratic.
Blocking roads and damaging private properties are already enough reasons to trial them;
slowing down economic development makes their actions even less forgivable.
Even worse could be where a barrister ‘half represents’ a client by not fully putting the whole of the client’s case because of some qualm about climate activism by, for example, only half heartedly representing a petroleum supplier believing such clients are really not worth counsel’s most strenuous effort . . By this fashion the poison of bias slowly enters the system
19 comments
>Eighteen barristers, including six king’s counsel, have signed the declaration. They will now self-refer to the Bar Standards Board for breaking the profession’s “cab rank” rule, which specifies that a barrister must take a case they are qualified for, provided they are available to do so.
Fair play to them, they could have just said their diary was full and refused to take the cases on.
Just a shame that it seems there is no place for morals in the legal world.
Absolute disgrace, they should all be disbarred. It is not the place of lawyers to determine which crimes are prosecuted or to decide any group is immune to the law. What happens next, they start to decide what crimes they won’t defend because ‘it goes against their morals’?
Then how do they explain it when they defend someone who is a murderer or rapist, and as their lawyer they know they are guilty, but defend them anyway? It seems they forgot how to be lawyers, at least selectively, to score some cheap social media points.
I’d swear that I saw a tweet from the Secret Barrister that said none of the barristers in this list are on the Crown Prosecution Service panel and so aren’t allowed to prosecute anyway…
This might be another helping hand to push the boulder down the hill of public opinion changing in favour of climate protesters and direct action to stop catastrophic climate change. If the top lawyers for the King and courts say “No, this is wrong, we should not be prosecuting people who are protesting peacefully” then they either make them all redundant which would cause absolute furore or they swallow the pill and realise that these new protest laws are unenforceable if they are not able to prosecute individuals for protesting peacefully. It might just force the government to back down on such a stupid piece of pearl clutching legislation…
Surely that just means the more scumbag lawyers that are dishonest and twist the truth will do it instead. Which will probably lead to more of them going to jail than less.
Right?
Surely the top lawyers should be representing the peaceful protesters instead of doing nothing.
Didn’t realise KCs were prosecuting these people in magistrate courts.
Philosophically speaking, does signing this declaration not make them unqualified to prosecute “peaceful climate protestors” anyway? Hard to violate a rule that requires you take cases you’re qualified for if you’ve already stated that you are biased against the case to begin with.
Sounds nice until someones gran dies because the ambulance couldn’t get to them on time due to being stopped by some pricks that had glued themselves to the road
Ridiculous, day by day the rule of law means less & less
Unless they are causing harm to people or property. Why should they be imprisoned?
So many people here more outraged by the lawyers actions than the fact we lost our right to peaceful protest that made this a supposed crime in the first place.
One of the cornerstones of democracy, taken away from us by rich dick heads, and yet boo those who take a minor bloody stand for it!
Climate change is about to be irreversible. Stop worrying about legality.
While obviously barristers should not be picking and choosing who they prosecute, the lawyers named in this article are not on the Crown Prosecution Service panel and so are not allowed to prosecute anyway.
>Jolyon Maugham KC, the head of the Good Law Project and a key signatory of the declaration, says: “Like big tobacco, the fossil fuel industry has known for decades what its activities mean. They mean the loss of human life and property – which the civil law should prevent but does not.
>“The scientific evidence is that global heating, the natural and inevitable consequence of its actions, will cause the deaths of huge numbers of people. The criminal law should punish this but it does not. Nor does the law recognise a crime of ecocide to deter the destruction of the planet. The law works for the fossil fuel industry – but it does not work for us.”
I think we’re increasingly realising this is an existential threat and how little we are able to do without courageous political leadership or audacious protests.
Regardless of one’s stance on climate change, it really isn’t the place of the judiciary to decide on whether laws are moral enough to be enforced. That is reserved for the legislature and the legislature alone. Any attempt by the judiciary to refuse to prosecute people based on the laws as passed by parliament is fundamentally undemocratic.
Blocking roads and damaging private properties are already enough reasons to trial them;
slowing down economic development makes their actions even less forgivable.
Even worse could be where a barrister ‘half represents’ a client by not fully putting the whole of the client’s case because of some qualm about climate activism by, for example, only half heartedly representing a petroleum supplier believing such clients are really not worth counsel’s most strenuous effort . . By this fashion the poison of bias slowly enters the system