CITY AND SUBURBAN
Gresham's Law in the High Court of Justice it's the great judicial inflation
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
There is so much judicial inflation these days that it was a pity to demonetise Mr Justice Harman. He was the genuine coin- age and from now on it will be scarcer. The arithmetic speaks for itself, as he did. We have 97 High Court judges, when a lifetime ago we got along with 35 of them. Now we have 35 Lords Justices of Appeal to sit in Judgment on them, and to put Harman J. down and force his resignation — complete with a sailor's farewell from Lord Irvine. All of them are by-products of the great lit- igatory inflation which has allowed so many cases to go on and on without risk to the individual litigant and at the taxpayer's expense. The judges get a knighthood on appointment and a pension later, so long as they remember in the meantime to keep their noses clean and their mouths shut. If they do not know the names of footballers or pop groups they can always keep quiet about it. Harman J. never troubled to do that. He might have retorted that there are other things that Chancery judges need to know, such as the law. Before his court would come the business of the commercial bar and the disputes of major companies, British and international. No one doubted the force of his mind and few succeeded in overturning his judgments. He upset some of the big City law firms, and some barris- ters, too, slapping them down when they failed (as he saw it) to do their work prop- erly. They got their own back in the polls that rated him the worst judge in England, meaning that he was rude to them. There are worse judicial faults than that. We need robust and independent judges. We can always get grey ones who are kind to aM- mals and solicitors' clerks and are in tune with the spirit of the times. There are plen- ty of them lining up to take Mr Justice Har- man's place.
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