Professor Graham Gee has co-written (with Professor Richard Ekins, University of Oxford) a report for Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project arguing that the system for selecting senior judges needs reform. The paper points to the need for increased ministerial input to rebalance senior judicial appointments, with the authors calling for the Lord Chancellor to have discretion to select from a shortlist prepared by the Judicial Appointment Commission or other relevant selection bodies.
In a Foreword to the paper, the Rt Hon Jack Straw welcomes the report and endorses the reform proposed by Professors Gee and Ekins as ‘very sensible’. The former Labour Lord Chancellor notes that the report may be greeted by ‘expressions of outrage and charges of “political interference”’, but he goes on to say that such criticism would be ‘wholly misplaced’.
The Financial Times has reported that the government is currently studying Professor Gee and Ekins’s report as part of its constitutional reform agenda.