Why are our judges so free to misinterpret the law?

Used to be that judges were all mad old right-wingers straining at the leash to hang and flog everyone who appeared in front of them – including defence counsel and every member of the jury.

They were, if you like (and I do) as brutal but fair as you can be when you’re to the right of Genghis Khan: scary figures of authority whose savagery was held in check by the need to interpret the law of the land sensibly and justly. The one thing we could be sure of was that they were basically on the side of (a) common sense and (b) the rest of us.

When did these doughty, fire-breathing, black cap-donning misanthropes disappear? Within living memory we used to have judges who could see nothing wrong in asking members of the jury whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover was a book they’d like their wives or servants to read (okay, he was a QC at the time, but he went on to become a judge). When did they get replaced by the modern type of feel-good liberal who’ll bend over backwards and disappear up his own fundament in order to interpret European law in a way that only seems to benefit crooks, scoundrels, illegal immigrants, rapists, child-killers and super-rich celebrities from the worlds of sport, TV and finance who can’t seem to manage to keep their peckers in their pants for more than five minutes at a time? (“Oops, there it goes again! Mind of its own!”).

In the United States, it’s even worse. Last month, some ghastly liberal judge prevented the Republican Governor of Wisconsin from curbing public sector wage-bargaining powers following some truly disgusting, anti-democratic shenanigans by union members and locally Democrat politicians. (Barack Obama had already broken tradition by speaking out on behalf of the left-wing wreckers – classy guy.)

Now, I love the concept of an independent judiciary to death: I want some form of protection from the whims of whichever member of our ruling liberal elite happens to have won the latest round of the endless game of “pass the parcel between people who aren’t that different really” that British politics has degenerated into.

But judges these days don’t seem much interested in protecting decently-behaved, law-abiding citizens – they seem to see it as their job to offer blanket protection to those who prey on the innocent, as well as the sexually incontinent super-rich (recently, an MP used parliamentary privilege – bless it! – to reveal that one of the chief architects of the credit crunch, Sir Fred Goodwin, had been granted a super-injunction to stop him being identified as a banker – although a quick search on Google reveals what was really going on). Judges do this by twisting existing laws - often foreign ones - into pretzel shapes to reflect their own left-wing prejudices.

Here’s a question (put by someone who is infinitely ignorant about the law, but is very pleased that it’s there): why are the rules under which we live so endlessly open to interpretation? Why are so many cases glorified roulette games whose outcome is dependent not on the innocence or guilt of the defendant (or in the case of super-injunctions, plaintiff) but on whichever newspaper the presiding judge happens to take. (Daily Mail – don’t forget to pack lots of vaseline: Guardian – no need to cancel that dinner reservation).

The current system seems to place an awful lot of power in the hands of a small number of judges whose interest in protecting well-behaved Britons can’t always be relied on. Is it really impossible to draft laws in such a way that when someone goes to court, they have a pretty clear idea of what the outcome will be? Put it another way, why has a law been drafted in such a way that any TV presenter/footballer/banker can stop any media outlet within the Van Allen radiation belt from reporting that they’ve been shagging a prostitute/an employee/a colleague/a hedgehog? I mean, even David Cameron has spoken out on this subject – that’s how screamingly obvious it is that something is very, very wrong. 

Yes, the law has always been a bit of an ass. But now we really need to look at ways of stopping assholes from misinterpreting it.