Attorney Generals Office
Opening remarks
Thank you Helena for that introduction. It is a particular privilege to be introduced by a friend who I admire and respect so much and by someone who has spent a lifetime promoting the rule of law and protecting human rights.
Thank you also to the Bingham Centre for inviting me to speak to you this evening.
For nearly fifteen years, the Bingham Centre has been an essential voice for the advancement of rule of law values at home and abroad. Its work to promote a better understanding of the rule of law and to help build the capacity to give it practical effect, has never been more vital than it is today.
It is a record of which Tom Bingham, in whose name I am honoured to give this lecture, would surely have been proud. It is wonderful to see so many of his family here tonight, Lady Bingham, Dame Kate, Kit and Mary.
Lord Binghams judicial and non-judicial writing, his stature as one of the great postwar judges, has been an inspiration for generations of lawyers, myself very much included. I had the privilege of appearing in front of Lord Bingham as a junior in a series of interesting cases before the House of Lords in which I was led by a promising young silk called Keir Starmer.
But like many in this audience I also felt a personal tie to Tom Bingham. I applied for silk in 2009 and Lord Bingham was one of my referees but sadly my father, who was a lawyer, died shortly before my appointment. My sense of loss at not being able to share the news with my dad was softened by the fact that before he died I was able to show him a letter that Lord Bingham had written to me. The letter was filled with the warmth and support that many who knew Tom Bingham will recognise. Thus I will always feel a very personal debt of gratitude to him for the joy and pride that his letter gave to my dad.
It was in his cogent and elegant account of the rule of law that Tom Bingham encapsulated in his eight principles. Such was the authority and clarity of his analysis that the principles are now a necessary reference point for any discussion (or indeed speech) on the subject.
As Sir Jeffrey Jowell put it when he spoke at the launch of this Centre back in December 2010:
Tear open the Bingham package of requirements for the rule of law and, as each of his ingredients falls away, we progressively observe the stark outlines of tyranny- at worst; or authoritarianism - at best.
That remark has a particular resonance today. And what better illustration of the enduring contribution of that book could there be than the sight, earlier this year, of its Ukrainian translation being launched in Kyiv, on the frontline of the ongoing struggle for democratic, rules-based values.
Introduction: setting the scene, and the challenge
As that scene attests, we are living through uncertain and challenging times, with threats to the rule of law on a number of fronts.
This evening, I would like to talk about the necessary response to these challenges, through restoration of our reputation as a country that upholds the rule of law at every turn and by embedding resilience to rebuff the populist challenge.
Restoration and resilience. Im going to begin by setting out the nature of the challenge as well as proffering some thoughts on the relationship between the rule of law, democracy and human rights. I will then turn to three themes that I consider lie at the heart of the restoration and resilience project firstly, the rebuilding our reputation as a leader in the field of international law and the international rules based order; secondly, the strengthening of Parliaments role in upholding the rule of law and thirdly the promotion of a rule of law culture.
Our starting point is not a happy one. Conflict currently affects more countries than at any time since the Second World War. As too many people around the world are driven from their homes by wars and instability, there is a sense of an international system that is unable to act. That is unable to prevent wars of aggression and to address desperate humanitarian need.
As the Prime Minister said at the General Assembly in New York, those institutions of peace that the UK and others worked so hard to establish after the horrors of the Second World War are struggling. Those rules that we have all worked so hard to maintain are being undermined. And faith in international law, and the international rule of law, is being chiselled away in communities who are told, time and again, that the system is failing to deliver for them.
The challenges we face are increasingly global whether the development of AI, the threat of climate change, growing inequality, or increased migration and we need a functioning global order, underpinned by a strong commitment to the rule of law, to even begin to tackle them.
At home, too, we cannot afford to be complacent about the extent to which values that once were taken for granted have been undermined. A near decade of crisis and political instability has, at times, stretched the fabric of our constitution to its limit. I dont wish to make a party political speech, indeed I am determined to make the promotion of the rule of law a project we can all sign up to irrespective of our political allegiance.
At a time when there is a desperate need for cooperation and solutions, we are increasingly confronted by the divisive and disruptive force of populism. This is not a new phenomenon. But in recent years we have grown accustomed to diagnosing its symptoms, on both right and left.
We face leaders who see politics as an exercise in division; who appeal to the will of the people (as exclusively interpreted by them) as the only truly legitimate source of constitutional authority.
Their rhetoric conjures images of a conspiracy of elites; an enemy that is hard to define, but invariably including the people and independent institutions who exercise the kind of checks and balances on executive power that are the essence of liberal democracy and the rule of law. Judges. Lawyers. A free press. NGOs. Parliament. The academy. An impartial and objective civil service. Populists work to diminish their legitimacy or, at worst, actively remove them from the scene altogether.
Allied to this, we have also seen how populism, in its most pernicious forms, works to demonise other groups, usually minorities to discredit the legal frameworks and institutions that guarantee their rights, and dismantle, often through calculated misinformation, the political consensus that underpins them.
The argument
Times of crisis and challenge are fertile ground for this kind of politics. And they can create a receptive audience for the populists argument that the rule of law is somehow in tension with democratic values.
It is this dynamic that I want to address in tonights speech - I want to argue that this is precisely the time for us to reaffirm that the rule of law both domestically and internationally is the necessary precursor to those democratic values, providing the foundations for political and economic flourishing.
And I want to be clear that by the rule of law, I do not just mean rule by law; a purely procedural and formal conception that populists and authoritarians can themselves so often use as a cloak of legitimacy.
One of Lord Binghams great contributions was to promote a more substantive conception of the rule of law, including the idea that the law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights. I too believe that human rights both at the level of principle, and in practice through how they are enforced are an essential element of the rule of law and a stable democratic culture. As well as recognising and protecting the dignity of all, they guarantee the essential rights and freedoms which underpin our system.
Far from being at odds with democracy, as some populists would have us believe, the rule of law is the bedrock on which it rests. What good is democracy indeed, can democracy exist without the right to free and fair elections or freedom of speech, guaranteed by the right of access to the courts and an independent judiciary? And I would go further. Democracy, in my view, is inextricably related to the rule of law, properly understood. For what good is the rule of law without democracy, which confers essential legitimacy on the rules that govern the relationship between citizen and state?
Lord Binghams conception of the rule of law also recognises that international law is the Rule of Law writ large, and that States must comply with their international obligations, just as they must comply with domestic law. This, too, is crucial. International law is not simply some kind of optional add-on, with which States can pick or choose whether to comply. It is central to ensuring our prosperity and security, and that of all global citizens. As will develop later, our reputation as a country that can trusted to comply with its international law obligations, and has a robust adherence to the rule of law, is essential to our ability to grow the economy, as grow it we shall.
And maintaining our international reputation also enhances our ability to work with our partners to get things done in this time of global challenge. Rather than isolating ourselves from our closest allies, it means we can strengthen cooperation on issues like migration; whether thats the Anti-Smuggling Action Plan, which the Home Secretary secured with G7 partners in Italy earlier this month; or closer working with international law enforcement