Paradoxically, this new found uneasiness as to the propriety of the civil courts ruling on matters religious might be thought to reflect the growing secularisation of public life in the UK, with the judges drawn from an increasingly unChurched class who – in contrast to their church-going and religiously literate Victorian and Edwardian forbears – felt uncomfortable and unqualified to sit in judgment on religious matters. [read post]

His positions have evolved on such issues as civil rights and the death penalty, and he has led the Court’s counteroffensive against the Bush Administration’s treatment of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay. [read post]