A couple of weeks ago a claimant wrote to me to describe what had happened to them in their case. It sounded horrific. I am often sent letters of that sort, and I attach my response to that claimant. I am not trying to devalue what I wrote to them, which was meant personally, but I thought it might be useful to others as indicative of my general approach, particularly towards the issue of whether Judges are biased (ironically, that correspondent was not saying directly to me that he thought his Judge had been biased, but it is a theme of others of my correspondents):

“I am grateful to you for writing, and I am truly sorry about what happened to you in your case. It sounds to me as if you have passed the point where there might be an legal remedy, and that is of the course the area in which I normally get involved.”

“In my book, I am trying (amongst other things) to give people a more satisfying explanation of why it is that so many good cases lose. Often people tell me that it seemed to me that the judge was biased against them, and I understand that, and I know it’s often how it feels. But what I try to explain is how even decent judges (who are the majority) are constrained by dynamics which just run deep in our legal culture, which the result that the right answer in law is often the wrong answer in terms of justice.”

“If you were to design the system from scratch you wouldn’t invent this one; and (because of the Coalition’s reforms), the future will be worse, not better. I appreciate that that is not a particularly cheerful note on which to end, but in a world peopled by adults sometimes it is better to face the truth.”