Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-tnzcf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T08:14:42.016Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Limits of Judicial Fidelity to Law: The Coxford Lecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Jeffrey Goldsworthy

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

This lecture asks whether judges might sometimes be morally justified in covert law-breaking in the interests of justice, the rule of law or good governance. Many historical examples of this phenomenon, are provided, drawn mainly from the British legal tradition, but also from Australia, Canada, India and the United States. Judicial noble lies are distinguished from fig-leaves and wishful thinking, and the relative importance of logic and pragmatism in legal reasoning is discussed. After examining arguments for and against judicial subterfuge, it is concluded that in modern liberal democracies subterfuge is justified only to avoid extreme injustices or violations of the rule of law.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , July 2011, pp. 305 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2011 

Footnotes

I thank Mr Steven Coxford for so generously enabling the University of Western Ontario Law School to host this lecture series, and Grant Huscroft for the great honour of inviting me to give the 2010 lecture, now revised and enlarged.

1. Kirk v Industrial Relations Commission of NSW (2010) 239 CLR 531 .

2. See Aronson, M, Dyer, B & Groves, M, Judicial Review of Administrative Action, 4th ed (Sydney, AU: Lawbook Co, 2009) at ch 17 .

3. Supra note 1 at 580-81.

4. Goldsworthy, J, The Sovereignty of Parliament, History and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); Carney, G, The Constitutional Systems of the Australian States and Territories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) at 106–07.

5. See text to notes 45-48 and 82-83 below.

6. Privative clauses at the federal level purporting to exclude High Court review for jurisdictional error had previously been held to be unconstitutional, but on a much sounder basis in the constitutional text: see Plaintiff S157 v Commonwealth (2003) 211 CLR 476 .

7. Ratnapala, S, “Rule of Law Ruling Widens Separation of Powers”, The Australian (12 February 2010).

8. King v Hibble; Ex p Broken Hill Proprietary Co Ltd (1920) 28 CLR 456, 469 per Isaacs J.

9. Nozick, R, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) at 28–29 .

10. Goldsworthy, J, “The Preamble, Judicial Independence and Judicial Integrity” (2000) 11 Constitutional Commentary 60 at 64.

11. I am indebted for the “happy endings” metaphor to Levinson, S, “Bush v Gore and the French Revolution” (2002) 65 Law & Contemp Prob 7 at 11.

12. There is a massive literature on this: a good place to start is Hart, HLA, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961) at ch VII, and Dworkin, R, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977) at ch 4.

13. Shapiro, M, “Judges as Liars” (1994) 17 Harv J L & Pub Pol’y 155 at 156.

14. Austin, J, Lectures on Jurisprudence, 5th ed (London: John Murray, 1885) vol II at 610 .

15. The M Kirby, Hon, Judicial Activism (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2004) at 46.

16. Ibid at 6, 11, 28-29, 35, 52, 61, 69 passim.

17. E.g., Raz, J, “On the Authority and Interpretation of Constitutions: Some Preliminaries” in Alexander, L, ed, Constitutionalism: Philosophical Foundations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) at 177 and 185 , discussed in Goldsworthy, J, “Raz on Constitutional Interpretation” (2003) 22 Law & Phil 167 .

18. Ibid at 176.

19. Raz, supra note 17 at 177.

20. Dworkin, R, Justice in Robes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) at 18–19.

21. Except in the state of Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory.

22. See Huscroft, G, “Vagueness, Finiteness, and the Limits of Interpretation and Construction” in Huscroft, G & Miller, B, eds, The Challenge of Originalism; Essays in Constitutional Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

23. Cardozo, BN, Selected Writings of Benjamin Nathan Cardozo ed by Hall, ME (New York: Fallon, 1947) at 37 and quoted by Brand-Ballard, J, Limits of Legality; The Ethics of Lawless Judging (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) at 13.

24. Frank, J, Law and the Modern Mind (New York, 1930; Anchor Books reprint, 1963) at 10 and 40-41.

25. “Doublespeak”, Wikipedia (as at 30 January, 2008) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak.

26. See Walker, G de Q, “The Unwritten Constitution” (2002) 27 Austl J Legal Phil 144 at 154.

27. Pound, R, “Spurious Interpretation” (1907) 1 Colum LR 379 .

28. White, GE, The American Judicial Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) at 260.

29. Posner, R, “What Do Judges and Justices Maximize? (The Same Thing Everybody Else Does)” (1993) 3 Supreme Court Econ Rev 1, 30 , quoted in J Brand-Ballard, supra note 23 at 5. See also Butler, P, “When Judges Lie (and When They Should)” (2007) 91 Minn LR1785 at 1786 and 1821 ; and Smith, MBE, “Do Appellate Courts Regularly Cheat?” (1997) 16 Crim Justice Ethics 11 (the author’s answer is “yes”). See also Smith, MBE, “May Judges Ever Nullify the Law?” (1999) 74 Notre Dame LR 1657 .

30. For a comparison of British and American legal culture, see Atiyah, PS and Summers, RS, Form and Substance in Anglo-American Law; a Comparative Study of Legal Reasoning Legal Theory, and Legal Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

31. Fuller, LL, Legal Fictions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967).

32. Knauer, NJ, “Legal Fictions and Juristic Truths” (2010) 23 St Thomas LR 1 at 9.

33. Fuller, supra note 31 at 1.

34. Quoted by Knauer, supra note 32 at 4 and 15.

35. Quoted by Knauer, ibid at 14; see also Smith, PJ, “New Legal Fictions” (2007) 95 Georgetown LJ 1435 at1466.

36. Dicey, AV, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 10th ed by Wade, ECS (London: MacMillan, 1959) at 18–19 .

37. Baker, JH, An Introduction to English Legal History, 3rd ed (London: Butterworth, 1990) at 586–89, cited in Alexander, L & Sherwin, E, “Deception in Morality and Law” (2003) 22 Law & Phil 393 at 425.

38. Radzinowicz, L, A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750, vol 1 (London: Stevens & Sons, 1948) at 87.

39. Ibid at 86, quoting Professor Jerome Hall.

40. For Australia, see Freiberg, A, “Guerrillas in our midst? Judicial Responses to Governing the Dangerous” in Brown, M & Pratt, J, Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order (London: Routledge, 2000); for the U.S., see text to note 73 below.

41. Reiter, B, “The Control of Contract Power” (1981) 1 Oxford J Legal Stud 347 at 360–61.

42. Gearty, C, Principles of Human Rights Adjudication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at 175.

43. Ibid at 175 and 192ff.

44. Ibid at 192.

45. Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission 1969] 2 AC 147, [1969] 2 WLR 163 .

46. For example, Wade, HWR and Forsyth, CF, Administrative Law, 7th ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) at 737 ; Thomas, EW, ‘The Relationship of Parliament and the Courts’ (2000) 5 Victoria U Wellington LR 9 at 27; Kavanagh, E, Constitutional Review Under the UK Human Rights Act (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) at 98 n 39 and 105.

47. Thomas, supra note 46 at 27.

48. Wade, Sir William, Constitutional Fundamentals, revised ed (London: Stevens & Sons, 1989) at 86.

49. Quoted by Wade, HWR and Forsyth, CF, Administrative Law, 9th ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at 39.

50. Steyn, J, Democracy Through Law (Ashgate, UK: Aldershot, 2004) at 131.

51. Bropho v Western Australia (1990) 171 Commonwealth L Reports 1, 18.

52. Mason, Sir Anthony, “Commentary” (2002) 27 Austl J Legal Phil 172 at 175.

53. Tremblay, L, “Section 7 of the Charter: Substantive Due Process” (1984) 18 UBC LR 201, 242 . See also Kavanagh, Constitutional Review, supra note 46 at 335.

54. Burrows, J, “The Changing Approach to the Interpretation of Statutes” (2002) 33 Victoria U Wellington LR 981 at 982-83, 990-95 and 997-98.

55. Kavanagh, supra note 46 at 334-35.

56. Holloway, I, Natural Justice and the High Court of Australia (Ashgate, UK: Aldershot, 2002) at 251, 259, 252 and 253 .

57. Goldsworthy, J, Parliamentary Sovereignty, Contemporary Debates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) at ch 9 .

58. Eastman v R (2000) 203 Commonwealth L Reports 1, 46 per J, McHugh .

59. J Austin, supra note 14 at 635.

60. Barber, N, “Sovereignty Re-examined: The Courts, Parliament, and Statutes” (2000) 20 Oxford J Legal Stud 131 at 145-49.

61. Ibid at 148.

62. R v R [1992] 1 AC 599.

63. Barber, supra note 60 at 146-47.

64. Devlin, P, The Judge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) at 84, 86, 90, 92 .

65. Ibid at 90.

66. Ibid at 91.

67. Robertson, D, Judicial Discretion in the House of Lords (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) at viii.

68. Ibid at 17 and 74.

69. Ibid at 75.

70. [1980] 1 WLR 142, 157.

71. Ibid at 168.

72. See Zeppos, N, “Judicial Candour and Statutory Interpretation” (1989) 78 Georgetown LJ 353, especially at 358, 361, 363, 378 .

73. Butler, supra note 23 at 1794-98, 1802-03, and 1808.

74. Little, LE, “Hiding With Words: Obfuscation, Avoidance, and Federal Jurisdiction Opinions” (1998) 46 UCLA LR 75 ; Bloom, FM, “Jurisdiction’s Noble Lie” (2009) 61 Stanford LR 971 .

75. Brand-Ballard, supra note 23 at 81.

76. Ely, JH, “The Wages of Crying Wolf” (1973) 82 Yale LJ 920 at 944.

77. Ibid at 350-51. Brown was a focus of criticism in Wechsler, Herbert’s famous article “Towards Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law” (1959) 73 Harv LR 1 .

78. Bork, R, The Tempting of America, The Political Seduction of the Law (New York: Touchstone Books, 1990) at 22–24 .

79. See Levinson, supra note 11 at 7, 20-21, and Sherry, S, “The Intellectual Background of Marbury v Madison ” in Tushnet, M, ed, Arguing Marbury, v Madison, ” (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2005) at 47, 49 and footnotes.

80. See the views of Geoffrey Stone, quoted in Levinson, supra note 11 at 14-15.

81. Strauss, DA, “Bush v Gore: What Were They Thinking?” (2001) 68 U Chicago LR 737 at 739.

82. Saunders, C, “Plaintiff S157: A case-study in common law constitutionalism” (2005) 12 Austl J Admin Law 115 at 117 (she actually says that “at first glance” it is an exercise in sophistry, because it can be defended on two grounds; but she goes on to reject both of them).

83. Aronson, M, Dyer, B & Groves, M, Judicial Review of Administrative Action, 3rd ed (Sydney, AU: Lawbook Co, 2004) at 830.

84. Goldsworthy, J, “Australia: Devotion to Legalism” in Goldsworthy, J, ed, Interpreting Constitutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) at 125-26, 128–29.

85. Ibid at 148-49.

86. Winterton, G, “Justice Kirby’s Coda in Durham Holdings” (2002) 13 Pub LR 165–70.

87. Kirk v Industrial Relations Commission of NSW (2010) 239 CLR 531 .

88. Goldsworthy, Interpreting Constitutions, supra note 84 at 73.

89. Ibid at 74.

90. Goldsworthy, J, “The Preamble, Judicial Independence and Judicial Integrity” (2000) 11 Constitutional Forum 60 .

91. SP Gupta v India AIR 1982 SC 149, (1981) Supp SCC 87 ; Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association v India AIR 1994 SC 268, (1993) 4 SCC 441 ; discussed in J Goldsworthy, Interpreting Constitutions, supra note 84 at 259-61.

92. “The Beard”, Seinfeld, Season 6, Episode 16 (1995).

93. P Devlin, The Judge, supra note 64, 90 [emphasis added].

94. Freund, P “Foreword” in Shapiro, D, ed, The Evolution of a Judicial Philosophy: Selected Opinions and Papers of Justice John M Harlan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969) at xiv , quoted by Shapiro, DL, “In Defense of Judicial Candor” (1987) 100 Harv LR 731 at 740.

95. See text to notes 23-24 above.

96. E.g., Bok, S, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (1978); Nyberg, D, The Varnished Truth: Truthtelling and Deceiving in Ordinary Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Martin, C, ed, The Philosophy of Deception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Carson, TL, Lying and Deception; Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

97. See Butler, supra note 29 at 1785. On lying, see Dworkin, R, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) at 327.

98. Butler, supra note 29 at 1811.

99. Farnsworth, W, “‘To Do a Great Right, So a Little Wrong’: A User’s Guide to Judicial Lawlessness” (2001) 86 Minn LR 227 .

100. Bork, supra note 78 at 27-28.

101. See text to note 91 above.

102. E.g., Shapiro, DL, “In Defence of Judicial Candor” (1987) 100 Harv LR 731 ; Idleman, SC, “A Prudential Theory of Judicial Candor” (1995) 73 Texas LR 1307 , Kircher, JJ, “Judicial Candor: Do As We Say, Not As We Do” (1990) 73 Marquette LR 421 , and Altman, S, “Beyond Candor” (1990) 89 Michigan LR 296 .

103. Butler, supra note 29 at 1817-18.

104. G de Walker, Q, “The Unwritten Constitution” (2002) 27 Austl J Legal Phil 144 at 154.

105. Brand-Ballard, supra note 23, especially 271-80.

106. See ibid 94-95 and 272-73, discussing Griswold v Connecticut (1965) 381 US 479.

107. I am indebted for several of the following ideas to Jim Evans, formerly Professor of Law at the University of Auckland, email dated 11 February 2007 (on file with author).

108. See Alexander, Larry & Sherwin, Emily, The Rule of Rules: Morality, Rules and the Dilemmas of Law (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001) at 11–25 .

109. Devlin, supra note 64 at 86.

110. See Dicey’s observations about Sir Edward Coke, text to note 36 above.

111. See text to note 91 above.

112. Bickel, A, The Morality of Consent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975) at 26 .

113. “Self-Reliance” in Essays, First Series (1841) available at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/emerson/ralph_waldo/e53e/part2.html.

114. Holmes, OW, The Common Law (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1881) at 1 .

115. Note that Holmes may not have been consistent. According to Judge Learned Hand, when he once admonished Holmes to “do justice”, Holmes replied: “That is not my job. My job is to play the game according to the rules.” Hand, L, “A Personal Confession” in The Spirit of Liberty, 3rd ed by Dilliard, Irving (New York: Vintage Books, 1960) 302, 306-07. For discussion, see Herz, M, “‘Do Justice!’ Variations on a Thrice Told Tale” (1996) 82 Virginia LR 111 . But if “experience” can trump “logic”, it is not clear why it cannot enable “justice” to trump “the rules”.

116. Hedley Byrne & Co Ltd v Heller [1964] AC 465, 516.

117. Scalia, A, “Originalism: The Lesser Evil” (1989) 57 U Cin LR 849 at 864.

118. Dworkin, R, A Badly Flawed Election; Debating Bush v Gore, The Supreme Court and American Democracy (New York: New Press, 2002) at 54–55 .

119. To be fair, Dworkin himself acknowledges elsewhere that judges might sometimes be morally justified in lying about the law: see text for note 20 above.