And no, I am not referring to Judy, Pirro, or Napolitano!
I gather many of you don’t think I have enough professional gravitas or social influence to say whether lockdowns (i.e., shutdown of all non-essential businesses and stay-at-home orders) compose the best strategy for fighting COVID-19. Well, there’s no denying that retired UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption has the former in spades, even if he has less of the latter than I do.
No doubt this is why The Sunday Times of London felt obliged to publish a special opinion he wrote on this pandemic. I, however, was simply gratified.
After all, Judge Sumption effectively echoed much of what I’ve been pleading in commentaries since February 18 regarding leaders grasping authoritarian powers, setting an untenable public-health precedent, and imposing a cure that is doing more harm than good.
Foremost, like me, he reminded readers that we have survived many pandemics with higher mortality rates – from the Bubonic plague to HIV – without lockdowns. Then, he waxed philosophically, perhaps even indignantly, that:
We have given the police powers that, even if they respect the limits, will create an authoritarian pattern of life utterly inconsistent with our traditions. … We have put hundreds of thousands out of a job and into universal credit. …
If all this is the price of saving human life, we have to ask whether it is worth paying.
Hear, hear!
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Well, actually, I did.
That said, I chose that picture of Sumption from his Court days on purpose. Specifically, because he looks more like a grizzled British banker than what you might expect of a serene British judge.
Truth be told, I can never resist an opportunity to poke at the irony of UK Supreme Court justices presiding in less formal attire than their counterparts in former British colonies, including the United States. Because, ever since 2011, UK justices have done so wearing nothing more than business suits.
By contrast, US justices famously adorn themselves in funereal black robes. But, ironically, their counterparts throughout the Caribbean Commonwealth do so – from head to toe – in judicial vestments that, frankly, seem more suited for France’s “Sun” King Louis XIV.
I pleaded for years for my Caribbean compatriots to spare themselves these ridiculous relics of British colonialism, but to no avail. That’s why I resorted to mocking them in commentaries like “’Hey Tony, What’s Up With the Brothers Wearing White Wigs?'” March 2, 2007, and “For Independence Sake, Caribbean, Abolish Privy Council!” February 1, 2016.
Related commentaries:
Coronavirus…
White wigs…
abolish privy…