Dear Mr. Cameron,

Re: Incompetent, Lying Judicial Oligarchy Mounts Coup d'Etat and Abolishes Judicial Independence, the Rule of Law and Democracy.

First of all, I apologise for interfering in the internal affairs of the United Kingdom, but you will no doubt realise how important the activities of your country's judges are, as an example and a precedent for the potential activities of judges in other common law jurisdictions. I have been dealing with this issue in my own country, New Zealand, and I am aware how Feminists like to point to other OECD countries to justify policies which, in all other respects, are totally outrageous.

May I refer to you to the news article Judges ordered to show more mercy on women criminals when deciding sentences at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311004/Judges-ordered-mercy-women-criminals-deciding-sentences.html Further details are available in Chapter 6.1 of the Equal (sic) Treatment Bench Book at http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/2009_etbb_6_gender.pdf

I would like to deal with this issue under two headings: Stupidity/Incompetence and Unconstitutionality/Illegality. The Bench Book's reasoning is no better than moronic and the senior female judiciary is attacking the independence of the judiciary, while pretending to be defending a warped version of that constitutional concept. It is also illegally discriminating against men.

 

Stupidity/Incompetence

I fear that your Oxford University First Class Honours degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics has not equipped you with the contempt necessary to deal with the modern legal profession. I have not studied at Oxford (although I was once offered a postgraduate place there), but one of my degrees was in Law, and I have some relevant insights which I would like to share with you, if I may be so bold.

To understand the legal profession – including the judiciary – you have to realise that it comprises people who:

• place a lot of emphasis on appearance, as opposed to substance;

• are often of mediocre intellect, although there is considerable variation in intellect; and

• have little collective knowledge of matters outside the law, but have a huge amount of power (including the power of lawyers over their non-corporate clients), which gives them a vast amount of unwarranted self-confidence;

If you examine Chapter 6.1 of the Equal Treatment Bench Book at http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/2009_etbb_6_gender.pdf you will see that the reasoning is so feeble that a reasonably intelligent primary school pupil would be able to see through it. However, the judiciary think that they are a law unto themselves (if you will excuse the pun), so that they do not need to be reasonable and rational – despite their role in judging, in court cases, what "a reasonable man" would do or think. (You will see below why rephrasing that as "a reasonable person" is wholly inappropriate.)

Although the very first page of Chapter 6.1 warns against "stereotypes and assumptions", which can "lead to unlawful discrimination," it only mentions this in connection with "women's lives" – and then proceeds to recommend that judges give more favourable treatment to women than to men, based on a set of stereotypes and assumptions! What is involved here is a predetermination (prejudice) on the part of senior female judges that women are disadvantaged, which is a primitive Feminist ideology which is based on placing a telescope up to their blind eye when looking at Men's Issues.

The lack of Natural Justice (due process) in the process of the drafting of the Bench Book results in relevant evidence being ignored, if it is inconsistent with the female judges' predetermined conclusions.

What I mean by a lack of Natural Justice is that this concept involves hearing both sides of an issue (audi alteram partem). Feminists, including Feminist lawyers and judges, are absolutely rock-solid on preventing pro-male advocates from presenting any arguments to the effect that men are as disadvantaged as, or more disadvantaged than women. This applies to the media, the education sector, and (now) to the senior Feminist judiciary.

To the limited extent that Chapter 6.1 contains any reasoning of an inductive or deductive sort, that is contained on page 6–12. Five bulleted paragraphs mention issues which are no doubt supposed to be relevant, since the very next sentence states:

These differences highlight the importance of the need for sentencers to bear these matters in mind when sentencing.

Logically, if these senior female judges are saying that all women should be given preferential treatment because some women have particular characteristics, then that amounts to using stereotypes to discriminate against men. If individual women (or men) appearing in court have particular characteristics which are brought to the attention of the court, then the court will no doubt be able to take due account of them on a routine, case-by-case basis. There is no need for a Bench Book to make a special case for women in this regard.

In the very next sentence, the Bench Book states:

However, this is not to say that men with sole care of children should be treated differently from women with sole care of children, nor that a man with a mental health illness should be treated less favourably than a woman with the same mental health illness.

In that case, there is no need for the Bench Book to make an issue (as it does) of the fact that "Women offenders experience high rates of mental health disorders," or the fact that "55% of women in prison have children under 18 (original emphasis)."

The reasoning here is completely incoherent and self-contradictory: the Bench Book presents as making a case for special treatment for women based on their special needs, but, on the other hand, it states that women and men in identical circumstances will be treated identically! How did these women even get to be lawyers – let alone judges, if they can't even think logically? Some sort of quota system must be operating in the legal profession, which ends up kicking incompetent women upstairs.

Only two of the five bulleted paragraphs actually get close to comparing women with men – and that is clearly because the situation of men is probably worse than, or at least not better than, that of women as regards the issues mentioned. In one case, the comparison is actually of the children of male prisoners with the children of female prisoners. It should also be mentioned here that the Fathers' Movement has long been making the case that judges discriminate against fathers in custody decisions, so, if women end up with more of the children to look after, the judges arguably have only their own anti-male bias to thank.

The one paragraph that actually does compare women with men states that a greater proportion of women than of men are in prison for non-violent offences. There is no attempt to explain why this should lead to more favourable treatment for all women compared to all men. Indeed, there is published evidence in New Zealand1 (and, I am told, in the United Kingdom, where the Home Office produced a booklet on sentencing differences, circa 1999) that women receive systematically more lenient sentences than men, other things being equal, so this anti-male bias may result in fewer violent women than men receiving prison sentences. In addition, the same Feminist political movement that is allowing senior female judges to pervert the constitution has also made male violence a media issue, while diverting attention from female violence. This may also be a factor that keeps violent women out of prison.

One other bulleted paragraph mentions that women offenders' "specific needs are distinct from those of male offenders," but there is no attempt to state what the specific needs of male offenders might be and how they could be catered for. There is no reason to think that the prison service goes out of its way to cater for men's "specific needs," so the probable result of this concern by senior female judges is that female prisoners' "specific needs" will be researched and catered for, with male prisoners being expected to cope with whatever is dished out to them.

Chapter 6.1 also mentions sexual harassment, domestic violence and genital mutilation as if the victims were solely women – whereas the available evidence shows that men are victims of these events at least as often as women. See, for example, Professor Martin Fiebert's annotated bibliography of Domestic Violence at http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm . Of course, male genital mutilation is legal in Western countries, and Feminist researchers are not interested in researching or publicising sexual harassment of males by females!

Page 6-8 contains the blatant lie that domestic violence "consists mainly of violence by men against women." The same page also states:

Domestic violence is rarely a one-off incident, and could also be seen as a pattern of abusive and controlling behaviour through which the abuser seeks power over their victim.

This lie, like most of the drivel in this chapter, is totally unsupported by references or evidence, and is a mere regurgitation of the Power and Control (Duluth) model of domestic violence, which is a Lesbian fantasy for which there is not, and has never been any evidence -- see the page Tracey Swanberg and Dyke TV Tell Lies Because they Can, Because they Want to, Because they Want to.

On pages 6-9 to 6-10 there is a brief section headed "Myths to be challeged." The word myth is a favourite of the Feminists, who use it to designate any idea which they consider repugnant. It is typical of Feminists that the categorisation of a belief as a myth is not supported by references or empirical evidence in this Bench Book. In a Democracy (which, on the evidence this Bench Book, the United Kingdom is not), such issues should be determined by experts in their journals and conferences, etc., and by courts after hearing relevant expert evidence. These are not matters which a senior female judge should dictate appropriate views on to the rest of the judiciary! What would happen to a barrister who wished to plead a case which differed, in either a nuanced or a radical way, from the doctrine that this female judge enunciated in this Bench Book? Obviously, his client could not get a fair trial, because of the Bench Book's prior influence on the mind of the judge or judges involved in the case!

It is a terrible indictment of the probity and intellect of the judiciary (and of the female judicary in particular) that the drivel which fills this chapter has ever been approved by the relevant judicial processes.

 

Unconstitutionality/Illegality

The senior female judiciary is attacking the independence of the judiciary, while pretending to be defending a warped version of that constitutional concept. It is also illegally discriminating against men.

Chapter 1.1 of the Equal Treatment Bench Book lists several "key points", including the following two:

 

1. Ensuring fairness and equality of opportunity may mean providing special or different treatment;

2. Those at a particular disadvantage may include people from minority ethnic communities, those from minority faith communities, individuals with disabilities (physical or mental), women,....

In a Democracy, these two "key points" amount to a totalitarian trespass on civil liberties. The United Kingdom has human rights legislation and case law, and that is the law which should govern the administration of justice. It is not for senior Feminist judges to "legislate," as it were, in Parliament's place. If such issues come up in individual cases, then individual judges are perfectly capable, as page 1-5, the Benchbook shows (see the excerpt quoted below), of interpreting the law in an appropriate manner:

It is important to emphasise that we are not concerned about equal treatment but about fair treatment and substantive equality. It is not sufficient to treat everyone in the same way – equal treatment may itself amount to discrimination:

… the applicant is different from other people to the extent that treating her like others is not only discrimination but brings about a violation of Article 3.

Judge Greve in Price v UK, ECHR (2001) 10 July (No. 33394/96)

 

Judges are perfectly capable of making independent judgments based on the above precedent, if it is indeed the state of the law at the relevant time. In the intervening time, however, it is quite possible that Parliament or the courts might have made the above case legally irrelevant. So it is not only unconstitutional but also incompetent for senior Feminist judges to attempt to direct the other judges on such matters.

It is also not within the competence or constitutional role of senior female judges to determine, on behalf of other judges, what categories of people are "particularly disadvantaged," since it is impossible to provide an exhaustive list and there will be reasonable differences of opinion about who should be included in any such list. No references or evidence are provided to justify the categories included, and we have seen (above) how incoherently Chapter 6.1 attempts to make out a case for women being particularly disadvantaged.

Given (as mentioned above) that there is evidence that the judicial system is biased against men, given that the Bench Book teaches judges that women (but not men) are disadvantaged, and given that the Bench Book teaches judges that ensuring fairness and equality of opportunity may mean providing special or different treatment, what we have here is a recipe for the anti-male bias in the justice system becoming even worse.

Judges are here being judges in their own cause. Because judges are biased against men in the first place (as shown by the empirical evidence), they conclude that women are disadvantaged, and so conclude that there should be even more bias against men in the so-called "justice" system!

Judges are not competent in areas outside the Law. The political-philosophical concepts of "Diversity" and "Equality" are subjective matters which are outside their competence. They are not competent to teach other judges about such issues. The document Judges' Council Response to the Consultation Papers on Constitutional Reform (http://www.dca.gov.uk/judicial/pdfs/jcresp.pdf ) contains references to the "support of Civil Service staff", to "expert advice", to "training for trainers", to "the role of academic members in JSB training," and to "one nominated consultant for each JSB course," and these references make it clear that senior judges are in fact choosing outside personnel who, at least in some cases, tamper with the independence of the judiciary by presenting to judges their personal views on contentious issues, such as those mentioned above. Even if all the substantive teaching was provided only by judges, these judges would still have ultimately acquired their views from their favourite university lecturer, academic writer, or even journalist.

It is not the case that the "independence of the judiciary" principle has historically referred to the independence of the judiciary, as some sort of corporate body, like Parliament. Parliament makes its decisions as a corporate body, and needs to have its independence protected (against the Executive, mainly) but judges make their decisions individually -- even when they are sitting as a panel of three or five judges. The "independence of the judiciary" principle is meant to protect the independence of individual judges when sitting on cases, so that their decisions were influenced by nothing other than the pleadings of the parties, the law and the evidence. Naturally, the emphasis, historically, has been on assuring the independence of the judiciary from other branches of government, since that is often a pressing issue.

For example, The Universal Declaration on the Independence of Justice was unanimously adopted at the First World Conference on the Independence of Justice in Montreal in 1983. As republished in S. Shetreet and J. Deschenes (eds) "Judicial Independence: The Contemporary Debate", 1985, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=jEG0KVCu_soC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false ), sections 2.02 and 2.03 state:

2.02 Judges individually shall be free, and it shall be their duty, to decide matters before them impartially, in accordance with their assessment of the facts and their understanding of the law without any restrictions, influences, inducements, pressures, threats or interferences, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason (my emphasis -- PZ).

2.03 In the decision-making process, judges shall be independent vis-a-vis their judicial colleagues and superiors. Any hiearchical organization of the judiciary and any difference of grade or rank shall in no way interfere with the right of the judge to pronounce his judgment freely (my emphasis -- PZ).

 

The principle of the Independence of the Judiciary applies only to the actions of individual judges in specific court cases. This principle exists so that a court case can be decided by a judge purely on the basis of the facts and the Law, without interference from extraneous factors, people or institutions.The principle of the Independence of the Judiciary exists for the benefit of the public at large -- it is not meant as a protection for groups or institutions connected with the judiciary to enable them to act as they see fit without democratic public scrutiny or control.

In his speech on this topic, Australian Hon Justice Michael Kirby stated:

One aspect of judicial independence which is often overlooked is that judges must also be independent from each other. (http://www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/kirbyj/kirbyj_abahk.htm)

 

See also http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/lawlink/supreme_court/ll_sc.nsf/pages/SCO_speech_spigelman_301001

 

This new "equality" policy by senior Feminist judges constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex, and is therefore in breach of Article 6 and Article 14 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Human Rights Act 1998, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1 -- i.e. it is in breach of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Human Rights Act 1998 gives effect to, and it is also in breach of Article 2.1, Article 3, and Article 14.1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CCPR.aspx .

I believe that what we have here is a new phenomenon – the Judicial Coup d'etat. The response to it must be to assert democratic control and/or decentralisation of judicial education. The work of judges is essentially solitary and independent work – and so it should be. The more they are grouped together and socialised into some ruling (Feminist) ideology which spits in the face of mere facts, the more the independence of judges will be undermined and compromised. Services should certainly be available to judges, but they should be able to choose their own providers, and not have them foisted on them by any centralised group of ideologues. This matter is too important to leave to judges.

 

 

1 Sue Triggs, Sentencing in New Zealand: A Statistical Analysis http://www.justice.govt.nz/