Carta Obsoleta

     It’s difficult to deal with the news coming out of the United Kingdom these days.

     My Gentle Readers already know about some of the things beleaguering the Sceptered Isle. There are the increasingly restive and assertive Muslims, the theft and street chaos, the “grooming” of white girls by immigrants, the sinking economy, the rash of dependency, the use of the police to suppress dissent, and more.

     But can you believe that the Labour government wants to scrap the trial by jury?

'So judges are just better at finding facts?'
'They're experienced at it.'

Sir Brian Leveson, who led the criminal courts inquiry, explains why he thinks Lammy is absolutely right to scrap jury trials. pic.twitter.com/qDTQFw7acY

— LBC (@LBC) December 2, 2025

     Trial by jury is guaranteed by Magna Carta, which serves Britain as a partial constitution. You would think that a man knighted by the Crown would have at least a passing acquaintance with that document. Perhaps he does... yet he’s perfectly ready to violate that guarantee for “efficiency.”

     If Britain’s courts are “clogged,” what’s the nature of the cases that clog them? Might a great many of them be the fruits of luxuriant law and the overextension of government power? How many are free-expression cases, in which the State has striven to punish “misinformation,” or “hate speech,” or sentiments it simply disapproves? How many arise from regulatory overreach, whether via the State or one of the ubiquitous QUANGOs?

     But let’s look a bit deeper yet. What are the foreseeable consequences of a “justice system” that lacks the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers?

1. A trial judge not restrained by a jury verdict can rule on his understanding of the law alone, which eliminates the possibility of jury nullification of a bad or unconstitutional law.
2. The trial judge has authority over what evidence may be introduced; thus a trial judge can pre-justify any verdict whatsoever merely by excluding evidence that leans in the opposite direction. Thus, as appellate judges are not permitted to assess the evidence, the probability of a successful appeal is greatly reduced.
3. The State can ensure the imprisonment of any British subject, merely by lodging an accusation against him and bringing him to trial before a government-owned judge. Given the British government’s notorious hostility toward freedom of expression, that would effectively establish a censorship regime.
4. Inversely, the State can ensure the acquittal of any subject, by routing his trial to that selfsame government-owned judge. That would allow it to create classes of subjects who are guaranteed immunity from penalty for their crimes.
5. All the above make the “justice system” a weapon the State can use against anyone it pleases: to coerce compliance in whatever direction it pleases.

     That is completely opposite to the conception of the process for ensuring justice that the United States inherited from Britain two and a half centuries ago.

     But David Lammy, Britain’s “Secretary of State for Justice,” insists that there’s no other way to “unclog” Britain’s courts. Notably, he claims that his “reform” is victim-oriented: i.e., that the elimination of the jury will result in the “right” verdicts more often, faster, and with appropriate relief to the victimized. Never mind the other consequences I’ve delineated here. The judges can be trusted to get it right.

     If Parliament allows Lammy to get away with this abridgement of Britons’ rights, it’s all over for the denizens of the Sceptered Isle. Having their right to bear arms taken from them, the British State can now ride roughshod over them. However many pitchforks Britons still possess, they would not suffice to bring down that all-powerful edifice.