AS exams update: judicial bias

What does yesterday’s ruling by the High Court against Unite’s plans for a strike by British Airways workers tell us about judicial neutrality?

J.A.G. Griffith (ex-Professor of Law at the University of London) in The Politics of the Judiciary (1977) examined judicial attitudes towards such issues as trade unions and police powers, and suggested that judges had, ‘acquired a strikingly homogeneous collection of attitudes, beliefs and principles, which to them represent the public interest.’ They are on the whole, male, white, public school, and Oxbridge educated.

Some view this as an outdated concept, suggesting that the background of a judge doesn’t have a bearing on the outcome of a case, and that faults in the judicial system, lack of evidence, or a simply matter of judges applying the law as it is written more accurately explain why the rule of law does not seem to apply.

But you should tell this to union leaders who have seen their strike plans slapped down in a series of high profile court cases.
Last night on Channel 4 News Tony Woodley, Unite’s leader, in reaction to the decision by the Court of Appeal to halt a planned strike by BA cabin crew, argued that the rights of workers to strike weren’t being supported, with judges ruling in favour of their class or big business.

So do we have a ruling elite that works to perpetuate class inequalities?

On the one hand, this is the third ruling that has gone against workers in recent months, with Unite in December being banned, and Network Rail signal workers also had their strike served with an injunction. And in terms of this latest case, where the strike was ruled illegal because Unite failed to tell its 12,000 members about 11 spoilt ballot papers seems unreasonable and if this was a test applied to general elections we wouldn’t have a government.

On the other hand, the ruling is on a technicality and the law is technical. Therefore judges could be argued to be impartially ruling on the law.