"Why can nothing be done?"

Are we as powerless as we feel?

“Why can nothing be done???” and it’s sister quote “Steven, is there no law to prevent the Government doing this?” are probably my two most common questions on Twitter. And you all know the rules here – there is no such thing as a stupid question. Questions matter.

And it differs from the question of whether a specific legal answer exists – to which the answer is all too often “no”. It crosses that divide between politics and Law. And to anyone following the Podcast, you know we have these two ideas – a constitution made up of rules (often called ‘the legal constitution’) and a constitution of how we behave (called ‘the political constitution’).

We have both, because otherwise the fear is that too much power would be in the hands of lawyers and Judges. Now don’t get me wrong. As a poor boy in South Worcestershire I dreamed of being a Barrister. I worked very hard and at University I too thought Judges were super heroes (a famous Legal Philosopher literally wrote this). Then I met them.

Judges are not a magical solution to constitutional problems. So our constitution picked someone else to be its guardians – it picked you. Let me tell you why.