Meddling Judges Are Using Human Rights Act To Play Politics

WHO should decide if abortion is legal? It is a highly contentious issue with unmovable polarised views. So who should make the law? Voters, via the MPs they elect and can remove if they don’t agree with the decisions they take? Or unelected and unaccountable judges, over whom voters have neither say nor sway?

- Stephen Pollard

This is not some abstract question. It is directly and immediately relevant not only to abortion law but also to many of the most important and divisive current issues.

According to reports, the Government is preparing to change the Human Rights Act which, together with the growth of judicial review (when judges rule on a decision taken by government or other public bodies) has led in some areas to the creeping replacement of decision-making by MPs with lawmaking by judges. It goes to the very heart of our democracy.

Under America’s system of government, judges have a key role in determining some of the most politically divisive issues. Politicians – from the president and Congress down – can only act in accordance with the US Constitution and the US Supreme Court decides if they are acting unconstitutionally.

IT IS now, for example. reconsidering its landmark 1973 ruling, Roe v Wade, when it decided in favour of womens’ right to abortion, striking down as unconstitutional many federal and state anti-abortion laws.

So, if you want to change the law on abortion in the US, it’s not politicians – and thus voters – who matter. It’s judges.