Lord Sumption

Scottish Legal News editor Kapil Summan speaks to historian and former Supreme Court justice, Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, at his home in London. They discuss criminal reforms; the limits of law; the decline in legislative drafting in the UK; free speech and the need to stand up to the new cult

The actions of the UK government during the coronavirus emergency this year bear the hallmarks of authoritarianism, Lord Sumption has warned. The former Supreme Court justice noted that authoritarian government promotes "loyalty at the expense of wisdom and flattery at the expense of objective advic

Lord Sumption has admitted that he stopped obeying the coronavirus regulations when they began "reaching levels of absurdity". Speaking to legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg QC (hon.), the former Supreme Court justice said he did not accept that there was a "moral obligation to comply with the law".

SLN's editor reviews Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics by Jonathan Sumption. Though apt to be caricatured as some sort of anti-judge in the post-prorogation world, iconoclast jurist Jonathan Sumption—in this, his first popular legal book—echoes Montesquieu wh

A former judge has said the Supreme Court moved the boundaries of the law because of a "particularly disgraceful constitutional abuse" by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Lord Sumption said that the advice given to the UK government in the recent Miller prorogation case was "in line with the orthodox v

This year's Reith Lectures are now available on BBC iPlayer. In his first lecture, recorded at Middle Temple in London in front of an audience, retired Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption argues that, until the 19th century, law only dealt with a very narrow range of human problems. But that has cha

Advocate Paul Harvey reflects on the third of Lord Sumption's Reith Lectures, in which the former Supreme Court justice takes the ECHR to task. These are unsatisfactory times for lawyers who wish to engage in public debate. The law, like so many other specialist disciplines, is not always fairly and

A former UK Supreme Court judge has criticised the "mission creep" of the European Convention on Human Rights and suggested that the UK could be forced to withdraw from the nearly 70-year-old convention. Lord Sumption, 70, said that "intensely political questions" had been reclassified by the ECHR a

A proliferation of new laws and judicial power has diminished people's ability to make their own decisions, according to a former Supreme Court justice, The Times reports. Jonathan Sumption QC, Lord Sumption, 70, retired from the bench in December last year. He said that the case of Charlie Gard ind