“Yes” would be the answer of most.
But if you were an Ancient Greek magically transported 2,500 years into the future – then you’d probably say “No”.
If you were an Ancient Greek – and I am speaking more of Ancient Athenian Greeks than I am of Greeks in general, but they deserve a hearing given that they set up one of the first properly functioning democracies and were the hotbed for much of Western Philosophy – then one of the first questions you’d ask about a place was not “did you elect people?” (in fact they would have thought elections as undemocratic as people would not be treated equally – a lottery is far more democratic in that sense), but rather “who controls the courts?”
You see the rich, the powerful and the “cosmopolitan” elites always make it their interest to dominate the legal system if they can do so – why?
Because it doesn’t matter so much what the law is (or who is making it) providing that you have the ability to avoid it or interpret the law (or lack of law) to your particular advantage.
Let the majority make any many laws as they like, but if they can’t enforce it through the legal system then it doesn’t particularly matter what they decide.
Given that Britain has picked from a narrow social and economic elite of lawyers an even narrower social and economic elite of judges, you’d find it pretty hard to convince your Ancient Athenian that you were in a democracy.
They would probably say that we have an “oligarchy” (rule of the wealthy) as a consequence – and they would have some handy examples in the form of super-injunctions.
“Look at the case of super injunctions” they would say “the rich hire the most expensive lawyers and pray on the instincts of sympathetic judges – and they can win their privacy above what normal citizens would be able to afford – that is not democracy that is oligarchy”.
The Ancient Athenian would also probably point to the issue of votes for prisoners.
“The vast majority of your citizenry do not want votes for prisoners, yet they are probably going to have to allow it pass – despite what your citizen’s assembly (Parliament) has voted on. You call that democracy?”
(Now I accept that this is a European issue, but one could argue that the European Court of Human Rights was the brainchild of one elite, merely trying to pass its view of the law onto another elite).
A lot of the issues that most anger people in Britain are not really to do with politicians any more per se, they are often to do with Courts.
If you go down to your local pub or read the local newspaper there is always a story about how someone has got a punishment which is incredibly too light or some rich person who has managed to avoid punishment because of a technicality.
You can begin to see a growing frustration with this last undemocratic part of our constitution (if one accepts that the Prime Minister makes our executive democratic).
A few centuries ago one would argue that you couldn’t put the law into the hands of ordinary people as they would not be able to read or write – almost the entire population can read and right now and an increasingly large number of people participate in higher education.
Some would also say that the public don’t respect or appreciate the subtleness of law. But then people used to say that about elected Governments – that people would not understand all the issues – and yet that hasn’t lead to disasters on that front.
The point is that our Courts are desperately in need of reform. Aristotle himself said that one can only be a true citizen if one participates in authority and judgement. At present, we have one but not the other.
The Conservative Party has become more open to democracy as the citizenry has matured and developed – and this has reached its zenith under Cameron with the ‘Big Society’.
This is too big a project for this Government to do now, it is too big a project probably to do even in two terms let alone one.
But isn’t this a debate that we should start having?
I don’t know myself what a democratic legal system would be: elected judges perhaps?
However no one could doubt that we need to build confidence in our legal system – a poll in 2009 for the Ministry of Justice showed that nearly 70% of people lack confidence in the judicial system – and to the party that managed to achieve a turnaround there could be great political spoils…far more than the quagmire of say Lords Reform….
Like the new format…..