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Digital EditionJustice for Some? The Legal Shift That Could Hit Insurers
Roger Crombie is a United Kingdom-based columnist for Risk & Insurance®. He can be reached at [email protected].
The words “equal justice for all under the law” are engraved on the U.S. Supreme Court building.
The first word is redundant: Justice must be impartial, or it is not justice. An instruction to British judges to impose lesser sentences on, and reduce bail for, people from minorities or those who experienced a troubled upbringing, was controversially rescinded by order of the Government the day before it was due to come into force on April 1.
The Sentencing Council for England and Wales, an independent body, had issued the instruction to “tackle bias and reduce reoffending.”
So much for equal justice, whose antecedents date back to ancient Greece.
The cancellation won’t mean much: Judges already make decisions based on anything but the law. In 2017, Britain’s Supreme Court asserted its authority when it abandoned its adherence to the Bill of Rights of 1688, the foundational document for jurisprudence in Britain, and subsequently the U.S., Canada and other countries. The Supremes were opposed to Brexit, so they ignored a law that didn’t suit them, believing that their opinions trumped those of everyone in the preceding 325 years.
In March, a British judge let climate protestors walk after they committed $135,000 in criminal damage, because he believed in their cause, rather than the law. Police make dozens of arrests every day for “offensive” electronically posted private messages, while most shoplifters walk free. Despite its cancellation of unequal justice, the British Government is very much in favor of a two-tier legal system.
Last year, a private email considered racist resulted in the sender being imprisoned for 40 months, while a member of the governing party in Parliament walked free after repeatedly beating a constituent in the street.
Everything evolves, I suppose. Different times call for different measures. Horses for courses, and all that.
Critics of “… and justice for some” argue that, apart from destabilizing society, punishing living people for the sins of those long departed is not fair. (The system by which society is ruled by judges is called a kritarchy, by the way.)
Why this matters to insurers is obvious. If the judiciary is willing to ignore the law as a means of correcting perceived injustice, sooner or later it will be incumbent on us all to do the same.
An insured from a broken home, for example, would have a valid cause for complaint if asked to pay the same premium for the same coverage as those with less disadvantaged backgrounds. Britain’s constitution is unwritten, so case law is often the determining factor.
Sooner or later, an insurance company will become an unwilling guinea pig in a test of the validity of unequal justice. One more cost of doing business.
Freedom of speech is essentially over in modern Britain and elsewhere. Silent prayer is banned at numerous places. Despite the repeal of unequal justice for all, in practice, it remains in force. The very underpinnings of society are being dismantled in the name of progress.
The reasonable man, whose standards are enshrined in so many laws, may be the next to go. Some might say that, like Elvis, he has already left the building. &
