Chris Daw QC

The Supreme Court exposed Boris Johnson as the naked emperor

Almost every word of criticism of the judgment of the Supreme Court this week has been, frankly, barmy. Headline after headline has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the court, as it stepped in to reverse the prorogation of parliament for a record-breaking five weeks.

Most of the adverse comment has come from those with no legal training at all, let alone years of practice in the courts of England and Wales. I have no problem at all with that – everyone, as the cliché goes, is entitled to her opinion.

But opinion about the operation of the law is rather less valuable when emanating from the mouths and keyboards of those with no real understanding of how our legal system works. I have a number of opinions on good medical practice, on climate change, on what is wrong with our transport system. I sometimes express them in public and via social media. But unlike some commentators, I would hesitate to challenge a real expert, on the fundamentals of her specialist subject, informed by years of training and decades of real world experience.

My first day of law school was 30 years ago, almost to the day; the first step on a journey of legal education, training and practice in the courts, which took me in 2013 to Westminster Hall and my appointment as ‘one of Her Majesty’s Counsel, learned in the law’ – a QC. Hundreds of hours of study, dozens of exams, countless mock trials and moots, those first faltering steps into the courtroom and, eventually, the chance to stand up before the Lord Chief Justice of England (several of them in fact) and argue points of law, rooted in the abstract intellectual art form that is the Common Law of England.

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