Should Political Motivation Affect Sentencing?
A recent case of civil disobedience attracted the attention of the Supreme Court.
In this week’s episode of the podcast we examine the case of someone who leaked a Supreme Court judgment as a political act. The judgment was about the expansion of Heathrow Airport and the lawyer protesting the expansion worked for an environmental group involved in the case.
When coming to the decision the Justices cited the case of Cuadrilla Bowland Limited v Persons Unknown [2020] which suggests that those committing and act of civil disobedience should be granted greater clemency compared to someone who acted for purely selfish motives. Arguably that is the reason the lawyer in this case avoided doing jail time and got away with only having to pay a fine.
In the podcast I question whether this is the right approach. On the one hand, being sensitive to the motive of the defendant offers judges a degree of flexibility but, then again, justice should be blind and not discriminate.
Having thought about this more, I am convinced that showing greater clemency for acts of civil disobedience is not a good thing and shouldn’t be a relevant consideration. After all, who gets to decide what political motives are worthy?
In this case it may have seemed easy because the environmental ‘cause’ is broadly popular and the act of civil disobedience is relatively minor. But what about cases where someone like Tommy Robinson deliberately commits contempt of court because he has a political motivation to expose purported Muslim paedophiles? All of a sudden the stakes are much higher and we are expecting sentencing judges (who ought to be the face of neutrality) to make value judgments.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments or on our Facebook page.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2021-uksc-15/
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Marcus