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The Dredd-Ful Day of Judgement: Judicial Models and the Twilight of the West

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International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

I am the Law

It is hard to imagine two more disparate characters than Judge Joseph Dredd and Hercules J—the one an over-muscular, faceless and heavily armed street judge astride a Lawmaster motorcycle who overidentifies with his role (‘I am the Law’); the other devoid of any physical presence or image, and structurally decoupled from the execution of law by a fierce determination to maintain the separation of powers and accountability which Dredd so effortlessly ignores. Hercules J is the embodiment of an intellectualised, yet creative, operationalisation of law. To the academic spirit, Hercules is infinitely preferable as a model of judicial activism: his world conjures a contemplative modality, ever alert to the requirements of rights and largely aligned with the temper of the post-Enlightenment. By contrast, Dredd is the personification of the worst aspects of law-and-order as the debased and politicised manifestation of the Rule of Law. His is an intensely visceral presence, the metonymic blindness of Themis replaced by the Dredd’s fractured eyeline: blindness as a signifier of impartiality yields to blindness as a symptom of institutional rage. This article interrogates the characters, actions and values of Hercules J and Dredd J, viewed primarily through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s Force of Law, focusing on the relationship between law and violence as it is exposed (or hidden) in Hercules’s and Dredd’s worlds, and then turning to judicial confrontation with the aporetic: the aporias, identified by Derrida and others, that law must confront. The interrogation continues, finally contemplating the current state of law in the common law world—the world of liberal democracies, suggesting that the high point of democracy may well have passed, and that we are on a Dredd-ward trajectory.

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Notes

  1. The quote is the opening narration of the 1995 film, Judge Dredd [13].

  2. There is, in the context of a comparison between Hercules and Dredd some significant irony—Hercules/Heracles is set to his labours as atonement for the killing of his sons. We cannot imagine that Dworkin’s Hercules had children—he is so dedicated to the project of legal adjudication that we could not see him as married. Dredd, however, while also celibate, does eventually kill his brother/co-clone, Rico. But his labours are not imposed as expiation for that act, but are a direct result of his ruthless obsession with upholding the law.

  3. Although Foucault speaks of the “universal juridicism” of modern society in Discipline and Punish, that universality should not be taken entirely at face value: he continues “… which seems to fix limits on the exercise of power” [35, 223] (my emphasis). However, its equally universally “widespread panopticism enables it to operate on the ‘underside of the law’, a machinery both immense and minute…” [35, 223]. While Foucault may, then, see the “universal juridicism” as something of an illusion, it nonetheless informs other approaches to the role of law and juridical concepts as they order society in ways with which Hercules would be familiar.

  4. There is a contrary model of judicial character and method, explored in Giddens’s Anderson v Dredd [38], and framed around a complaint by Judge Anderson, a Psi Judge, whose specialist jurisdiction lies in the otherworldly. Not that Dredd himself does not engage with non-human: his judicial method in that realm, however, does not differ markedly from his enforcement of law against human lawbreakers.

  5. In Revolution (Prog #532), a massive pro-democracy protest march through the streets is planned which will end at the Grand Hall of Justice. The Chief Judge did not want to ban the march, since that would only play into the organisers’ hands. His alternative was to order Dredd to undermine the march by covert action. When Dredd asked if his orders included breaking the law, Silver replied, "on this one you write the law." The prime feature of Dredd's character had always been his utmost regard for, and total obedience to, the law. The remit to act outside the law seems sourced in the Security of the City Act, which would paradoxically make breaking the law (by a Judge) a lawful Act in certain circumstances.

  6. Nietzsche observes that ‘the lordly right of giving names extends so far that one should allow oneself to conceive the origin of language itself as an expression of power on the part of the rulers: they say ‘this is this and this,’ they seal everything and event with a sound and, as it were, take possession of it’ [65, 12]. Nietzsche held the textually constituted world of the lawyer in little regard—or perhaps the textually-constipated world of the lawyer—and felt that judicial interpretation suffered from a need to “take the short route, the rapid interpretation” [65, 12]. Dredd observes and immediately categorises actions within the nomenclature and taxonomy of the Law. Precisely what Hercules does not do.

  7. The concept of the “closing-down” function of juridical practice is addressed in Giddens’s Anderson v Dredd [38], where the Presiding Judge considers Anderson J’s claim that Dredd functions contrary to any concept of ‘ethical judgement” by closing down meaning. The resolution, even in the rather contrary space of a Mega-city courtroom and a judge explaining in detail his/her reasoning, is that without closing down meaning in a particular context to a recognisable and singular meaning, judgement would be impossible [38, 394–400].

  8. Giddens continues, Dredd’s “institutional face is problematically dehumanized”, linked in Judge Anderson’s argument to Dredd’s fundamental nature as a judge: dehumanized, unreflective, even horrific (which are the bases for Anderson J’s action against Dredd). Nevertheless, 15 years’ training and the experience of life on the battleground of the streets of Megacity 1 and beyond, the mask is never a complete obliteration of the person beneath: “no matter how hard we try to control it, sooner or later the human being behind the mask always starts to come out. Even in a streethard Judge like Dredd’: see [99, #389], cited by Giddens [38, 390: n2].

  9. Ironically, Judges are, as a class, required to be celibate. Like Catholic priests, perhaps, the distractions of marriage and sex would divert them from their true dedication to the Law—God’s for the former, the Law of the Judges for the latter. Faced by a proposal by Bella Bagley in Love Story, Dredd reacts swiftly: “Wife? Get off me, woman! Get this straight — I don't love you! I'll never love you! I am incapable of loving you! I'm a Judge and the only thing I love is the law — which right now you happen to be breaking!" [100, #444]. This is entirely consistent with the graphic presentation of Dredd (and other male judges) as genitally ambiguous—consider the most emblematic rendition of the Judge, the “Statue of Judgement”, and its complete lack of modelling in the groin to indicate anything but a Ken Doll lack of anatomy [96, #7].

    Pragmatically, the existence of intimate partners would problematise judicial function, leaving Judges open to manipulation, or at least confliction, should their partner be put at risk—a feature of the disinclination of other superheroes to form close personal attachments, or to maintain secrecy around them. The role of body as a running trope through the Dredd franchise is (literally) graphically illustrated in Giddens’s imaginative legal action brought by Judge Anderson again Dredd [38, 395–399]: while Dredd’s uniform accentuates the masculine form (including exaggeration of the shoulders, and (at least in filmic display) a … generous? …codpiece), Anderson, by contrast, brings the female body to the fore, registering in the “rampant ogling” of her that has followed her throughout her career.

    For a detailed analysis of the presentation of the female body in graphic form, and the openness in displaying the female judicial body, see Giddens [38, 396–399]. For Anderson, uniforms have a twofold effect: they separate you from the Other—the rest of the world—while simultaneously locking you in “like a cage’, making the person behind the uniform invisible [38, 398]. This latter is a critical distinction between Dredd’s relationship with his uniform as signifier, and the impact of Anderson’s presentation naked, which reinforces the significance of the uniform encasing a living human being, with all that humanity entails. Dredd’s judicial training and street experience have all but erased the human beneath the mask. The nature of the graphic novel/comic accentuates the visual—in Anderson’s case, in a way that is antithetical to the function of judicial costume in the court system we recognise. In the common law world, robes function to depersonalise the judge, making them an unidentifiable manifestation of law, simultaneously masking their human fallibility and imbuing their decisions with an institutional correctness, as they are literally clothed with systemic authority, demanding deference and respect. Robes also desexualise the judge, serving to supersede the gendered body beneath. In Dredd-world, judicial costume accentuates the physical differences between the sexes, which follow faithfully the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity: Dredd is übermale, revelling in violence, Anderson, as a psi-judge, reflects the (hyper)empathic attributes associated with the feminine. The difference is revealed clearly in the confrontation with Batman. For Dredd, Batman’s mask, costume and weaponry are seen as signifiers of vigilantism (characterised by Sharp as a “key example of retributive justice”, and characters "taking the law into their own hands [84, 374]. Dredd seems blithely unaware of his own matching signifiers, rationalising them, if the thought were ever to cross his mind, as being legitimate markers of his institutional authority, contrasting with Batman’s signification as Other. Anderson, however, recognises that Batman is in pursuit of justice “despite his technically illegitimate and non-institutional status” [39, 116]. The difference is accentuated in the visual frame: Dredd the blank mask of institutionalism: Anderson with a “human face and flowing hair” [39, 116].

  10. Dredd undoubtedly has an encyclopædic knowledge of the positive rules/offences embodied in the codified law of Mega-city One. But knowing the law and being a lawyer, at least as we conceive it, involves more than mere recitation. The concept of the lawyer as understood in liberal democracies is a notable absence from Dredd-world. The court, such as it is, is called into session immediately—ie in the instant that a Judge observes a crime or is alerted to one by the network of “crime-stoppers” (see [96, #11], the process of judgment begins, and its outcome is equally immediate. Courts are instantiated without the mediating checks and balances such as legal representation that (at least in theory) serve as protections for the individual against the unlimited power of the state as prosecutor.

  11. The implementation of Law in the Megacities generates an ambivalence towards the judicial method adopted by the Judges, when viewed against the social and cultural environments in which it operates. Individuals are, one the one hand, given a sense of security that the Judges stand between them and the “lawless savages” (human or not) which serves the purposes for which Law was instituted in the Post-Apocalyptic body politic. They are, however, conscious that the mode of administering law, coupled with an attitudinal position that “everyone is guilty of something”, may see minute, and potentially inadvertent, breaches of the law escalate, even to a death sentence. Dredd’s zero-tolerance approach to judging is clear: “Start letting the little ones go by and before you know it they think they can get away with murder” [96, #58]. As such, the citizenry are both protected and prosecuted, safe and unsafe. Dredd’s observation above that “Only those who break the law have anything to fear from me” [96, #1] rings hollow precisely because of the dreadful (Dredd-ful) counterpoint of the incomprehensibility of innocence in Mega-city One. The enthusiasm of the onlookers at Judge Alvin’s murder suggests, however, that the balance is, on the whole, resolved in favour of (relative) security.

  12. Law sous rature: the typographical device, Law, bears a familial resemblance to the typological device of sous rapture as utilised Derrida, although the signifier, Law, is not wholly co-extensive with it. It is, for example, distinguishable as a typological device in that Derrida are both conventionally represented as a hand-written erasure. Law, in contrast, utilises a typographical form which is technological in nature and indistinguishable from the technological construction of the ‘conventional’ letters in a printed text. Both the initial ‘Law’ and the mechanism of its strikethrough derive from a common source, the technology (ironically) of word-processing. Sous rature is, for Derrida, ‘the mark of the absence of a presence’[25, xvii], signifying the ‘inadequate (or ‘inaccurate’) but necessary’. Law similarly, refers to that which is, in one sense, Law’s Other, and appears where, as Derrida might consider, it is necessary to refer to some spectral manifestation of Law which is not Law in any accepted sense, but is simply not captured by conventional antonyms such as “anarchy”. The attraction of the typographic erasure is that it renders—appropriately—what is signified as unspeakable. The same technological functions which allow the creation of the word “Law” as text also allow for the creation of its sous rature form. To “speak” of Law is therefore to engage with that which cannot be invoked through language—in Derrida’s terms, the “spectral” which is strange, unheard, other—but which nonetheless must be articulated.

  13. Blair was Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis (of London) at the time. He held that office at the time of the mistaken shooting of suspected suicide-bomber Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground, two weeks after the 7 July 2005 bombings around the capital—see below note 40.

  14. Antaki considers that the various manifestations of the ‘turn to imagination’ he describes are, despite the apparent radical tenor of the phrase, for the most part iterations or variations on conventional approaches, and that ‘most of the ideal–typical turns to imagination remain complicit with disenchantment. That is to say, “imagination” often appears only to be harnessed in the service of more conventional keywords of legal thought and the preservation of the status quo. [3, 4]. Imagination-as-synthesis functions as a mode of thought-through-imagination that is capable of grasping entireties, such as an entire body of law within a given legal tradition, in a way that (unaided) human and finite reason cannot [3, 9], and so capturing Hercules as envisaged by Dworkin.

  15. Dworkin’s positing of the “one right answer” thesis began as a direct challenge to H L A Hart’s open texture of language, and hence the strong discretion available to the Hartian judge. Even though the “one right answer” thesis developed over time, it remained constant at least to the extent that, even when confronted by linguistic ambiguity, the right answer emerges from “considerations of a better social order”, or serving “the value of integrity” [8, 78]. Hercules is not “free”, in any Hartian sense, to interpret open-textured language, but must do so according to a precise and demanding protocol designed to protect judicial decisions from judicial legislative invention. Dworkin’s reluctance to grant Hartian freedom to Hercules is an artefact of a stricter view of the separation of powers in the US body politic, and the demand for accountability, which places legislative creativity in the hand of elected lawmakers.

  16. Derrida’s catalogue of the forms of force which might effect such a change implies that the use of the word “overthrown” does not necessarily involve physical violence or a coup d’etat. What it does signify is that the legal order under which Hercules functions, and which provides the authorisation for his function, is replaced (by whatever means) by a legal order to which Hercules’s method is inimical.

  17. While Gewalt is often translated as “violence”, it is a word of complex meaning which ordinarily requires some form of qualification to bring into play the alternative forms of “violence” which it may carry: Derrida, for example, observes that Gewalt also signifies legitimate power in such qualified uses as Gesetzgebende Gewalt, Geistliche Gewalt and Staatsgewalt (legislative, spiritual and state power respectively). The open texture of Gewalt, that is, serves to highlight the inextricably entwined phenomena of violence and (legitimate) authority [24, 927].

  18. The Grundnorm is mystical in precisely the sense used by Montaigne and Derrida: that “laws keep up their good standing, not because they are just, but because they are laws: that is the mystical foundation of their authority, they have no other” (cited by Derrida [24, 939]). The “good standing” of laws—that is, their validity as laws—must, as Kelsen argues, rest of some other law (or norm). But ultimately there comes a point in the regression (or ascension?) within a system of law-validating-laws beyond which the question, “What validates this law?”, becomes meaningless. This is the ineffable and indefinable liminal space inhabited by the Grundnorm. And to take a positivist stance (found in Kelsen’s The Pure Theory of Law or Austin’s The Province of Jurisprudence Determined), the merit or demerit of the content of valid law is immaterial to any query about the nature of a law beyond its pedigree.

  19. The use of the word “violent” in this context, therefore, is not necessarily to be taken literally. Some nation states, certainly, have been born in violence. The US is a prime example, having freed itself from British domination in the War of Independence. At the other end of the spectrum Australia’s nominal creation as an independent state occurred through more diplomatic means, effected ultimately by an Act of the Westminster Parliament. Violence here can encompass non-literal modes of transition between legal orders, which nonetheless requires the destruction of the prior order in the moment of creation of the new (see also above, n6).

  20. The Lawgiver Mk II is vaguely similar in looks to a Glock 9, but its capabilities far exceed any current handgun. It can fire six types of projectile including a more or less standard “execution” load, heat-seeking and armour piercing projectiles and HE (high-explosive) rounds. The weapon is keyed to a specific judge, and will only operate on recognition of the Judge’s palm print.

  21. See above, n6: Nietzsche’s observation that by the process of naming, “they seal everything and event with a sound and, as it were, take possession of it’ [65, 12], re-inforces the truth-determining function of language, and hence of those who prescribe meaning authoritatively.

  22. The right to wear the black helmet of the Street Judge is explored in some detail in [95, #26]. Recruits to the Judicial Academy are either clones of previous judges (as indeed, Dredd is), or enter the Academy at the age of 5, and undergo 15 years’ training. Under a third of cadets graduate to become Rookie Judges, who then undergo street-testing under the supervision of an experienced Street Judge. Street-testing incudes ethical evaluation, to the extent that an inclination to mercy (in the form of medical treatment for “future shock” instead of the nominated penalty under the Law) is a failure. Dredd: “A Judge can’t afford to be sorry—he can only afford to be right, Rookie—I’m going to have to fail you” [95, #26]. The black helmet, and the right to wear it, are significant, and jealously guarded, emblems of the juridical norms of Mega-city One and the right to violence which they signify.

  23. The quote is taken from the 1995 film, Judge Dredd, directed by Andrew Cannon. The “transaction” between Dredd and a Block Warlord illustrates the ready escalation of violence in Dredd’s implementation of the Code. None of the enumerated Code offences carries the death penalty, but in the face of increasing sentences, the Warlord reaches for his gun, and is summarily executed by Dredd:

    Dredd: And code 3613… the first degree murder of a Street Judge…

    Block Warlord: Let me guess, life.

    … [he goes for his gun, but Dredd shoots him first].

    Judge Dredd: Death. Court's adjourned.

    Dredd’s final words, “Court’s adjourned”, emphasise that the courtroom of Mega-city One is wherever Dredd (or any of the other Street Judges) are when they encounter what they determine to be lawbreaking. This universality of juridical space is adverted to by the Presiding Judge in Giddens’s imaginative trial of Dredd: “The Mega-City itself has become the court, and the space for reflection has been necessarily reduced to enable a swifter justice better able to tackle the high crime rate” [38, 394].

  24. This view of the Benthamite Pannomion and the legal architecture which it implies is not universal: Alfange, for example, points to Postema’s “minimalist” or “revisionist” view, which constructs Law from a more limited number of principles which would guide, but not predetermine, the outcomes of specific legal processes.

  25. The cover for Wagner, The Complete Case Files 1 [96] depicts a close up of Dredd’s “face” with the highlights in the reflective visor which obscures his eyes bearing a disconcerting similarity to the lightning flash “SS” insignia (see Fig. 1).

  26. From an artistic/visual perspective, Carlos Ezquerra, “drew directly on the iconography of the regime that, until 1975, had controlled his homeland of Spain — that of Generalissimo Francisco Franco”. The eagle that surmounts Dredd’s right shoulder “is taken directly from the design on Francoist coins, the bird’s darting beak like a haughty, defiant, jutting chin; a symbol of authority and power, from the ancient Achaemenids and Romans, to the Third Reich … the ribbing of the pad on his left shoulder seems to evoke the bundled rods of the fasces, an icon of Roman solidarity and the National Fascist Party in Italy. In the badge on his breast the two symbols are joined, the eagle and the crest surmounted by a diagonal strip representing the red leather strip binding the fasces together. In addition, the uniforms of the SJS are “usually adorned with skulls, evoking the Totenkopf, the ‘Death’s Head’ motif of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and SS-Totenkopfverbände (literally “Death’s Head Units”)” of the Nazi era” [60].

  27. Dredd’s motorcycle is connected into a vast network of information which, for example, permits Scarface Joe Levine to be identified by Dredd after he has had “The New You” facial treatment by virtue of real-time voice recognition matching against a central database (“The New You” [95, #3]. Dredd’s final comment, “When will lawbreakers learn … in the 21st Century no one can escape justice” carries, in context, at least the implicit assumption that the technology available to the Judges allows a degree of “efficiency” in detecting and enforcing law which is all-pervading—a Panopticon to match the Pannomion.

  28. Again, as for “overthrow”, the use of the term “coup” or “coup d’etat” does not necessarily imply physical violence—the violence of the coup may be wholly symbolic or metaphorical: violence (Derrida’s violence fondatrice) is done to the system or existing legal order even when a coup is “bloodless”.

  29. We are acutely aware that anything resembling a court is alien to the legal landscape of Dredd-world. Legal process is carried out on the fly (as Dredd’s “adjournment” of the “court” after executing the Block Warlord (see above note 23) signifies. All of Mega-city One constitutes Dredd’s court … see [38, 394]: “The Mega-City itself has become the court, and the space for reflection has been necessarily reduced to enable a swifter justice better able to tackle the high crime rate”. His presence, together with that of perceived or reported wrongdoing, immediately calls the court to order, with determination, sentence and execution (real or metaphorical) following, unmediated by the niceties of legal process in the liberal tradition.

    Ironically, the presence of a recognisable juridical institution in Dredd-world is encountered in Giddens’s imaginative legal action brought by Anderson J against Dredd [2, 94]. But the absence of courts bears a particular significance: the law of Mega-city One is wholly embodied in the Pannomion, and the implementation of the law is in the hands of the Street Judges. There is no indication that a “private” wrong is conceivable, or determinable through the juridical concept of court proceedings, or correction of error. The absence of court systems (if not the irrevocability of the death sentence) in itself militates against any concept of appeal, at least as it is understood in the common law tradition.

  30. The phrase (literally “Here there is no why”) was recounted as part of an exchange between Primo Levi and a guard at Auschwitz in If This Is a Man. “Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within reach of my hand. I opened the window and broke off the icicle, but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away. “Warum?” [Why?] I asked in my poor German. “Hier ist kein warum” [Here there is no why], he replied, shoving me back inside” [56, 35].

  31. It is well, here, to remember that, at the conclusion of the parable, the doorkeeper shouts at the dying man from the country: “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” While the door itself may be closed, the aporia cannot: entry to the law has been eternally deferred to the subject seeking access. He is in the right place—a place which has been constructed solely for his benefit as the access point of law– but he is there at the wrong time, precisely because there is no right time at which the man from the country could approach the law: “The law is transcendent and theological, and so always to come, always promised, because it is immanent, finite and so already past” [24, 993].

  32. In common law jurisdictions, it is a general rule that appellate courts do not adjudicate on questions of fact, but accept (in almost all cases) the findings of fact made by the trial court. In the US, for example, see Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, r 52(a)(6), “Findings of fact, whether based on oral or other evidence, must not be set aside unless clearly erroneous, and the reviewing court must give due regard to the trial court’s opportunity to judge the witnesses’ credibility.”); applied in [59, 177] “Our role is to defer to the District Court’s factual findings unless we can conclude they are clearly erroneous.”

  33. The surrender of the conventional protections of citizens vis a vis the state might well be accepted by a democratic population in times of crisis. In criminalising terrorism, the UK legislature instituted reverse onus provisions, a “legislative technique that dates back to the 'Diplock report', commissioned to formulate precautionary legislative measures to deal with a previous (and long-standing) crisis in Northern Ireland [9, 180], Borgers, referring to Report of the Commission to consider legal procedures to deal with terrorist activities in Northern Ireland [1].

  34. Mounk is critical of the “consolidation” thesis—that as countries develop democratic institutions, a robust civil society and a certain level of wealth, their democracy is secure, pointing to examples of the fragile nature of recently democratised states (eg Venezuela and Poland) [61]. The intersection of authoritarian and democratic rule is most clearly evident in the unrest in Hong Kong, where the scale of pro-democracy demonstrations can be seen from figures from the Minister for Security (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), 2020), there were more than 1,200 public order events from June to December 2019, with many ending in violence. From mid-November to early December, police found, in two local universities, 8,000 petrol bombs, about 800 bottles of liquefied petroleum gas, about 1,000 bottles of petrol, nearly 700 bottles of inflammable chemicals and about 600 weapons including hammers, arrows, knives and air pistols [64, 483].

  35. For example, only 30% of the Dutch population born since 1980 see democracy as a political necessity, with a similar proportion in the United States [81]. As to tolerance towards military rule, support for military rule in the US rule rose from 6% in 1995 to 17% in 2014 [89], with a 2015 poll registering 29% of the US population who would support a military takeover government [10]. Between 1995 and 2017, the proportion of French, Germans, and Italians favouring military rule more than tripled [90]. Police in many democratic countries are adopting more militaristic paraphernalia and tactics in the suppression of dissent [76, 1].

  36. Once considered the home of modern democracy, the commitment of the British government to democratic principles appears to be waning: the government illegally shut down Parliament [78]; considered martial law as a response to anticipated disorder in the aftermath of a no-deal Brexit [104]; and contemplated by-passing the courts to bring “immediate justice” to the war on terror [48]. Lord Neuburger, head of the Supreme Court from 2012 to 2017, contemplated the Internal Market Bill, concluding that it “sought to do away with one of the most important aspects of any democratic society”, permitting, as it would, the United Kingdom to freely disregard its obligations under international treaties, and (more significantly for the Rule of Law) to shield its operation from judicial oversight [89]. Lord Neuberger viewed the Bill as placing the United Kingdom on a “very slippery slope" towards a dictatorship”. These are not the words of a political activist or a partisan politician, but those of senior Judge, not given to hyperbole, but rather to choosing words carefully, and mounting opinions based on deep and informed reflection on the relevant issues.

    Lord Neuberger was joined in his criticism of the Bill by Lord Sumption, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2018, who told a parliamentary committee that he believed ministers were intent on "doing down the courts as potential sources of impediments for the government's programme". Other senior judges and constitutional law experts have “commented on the ‘worrying trend’ of disrespect for the Rule of Law emanating from Downing Street” [49].

  37. Donald Trump routinely ignores long established norms of government, has mounted countless assaults on the free press [33], and threatens to destabilise the transition to a new administration following his loss in the 2020 election [63]. The recently fired Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Millet “pushed back” against the President, who had “threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to use active-duty service members against demonstrators” because they were concerned “it would look like martial law” [82]. The list is seemingly endless, and serves to re-inforce how fragile democracy is, and how susceptible it is to disruption by populist and/or authoritarian forces, even in states which have a long tradition of democratic values and processes.

  38. See, for example, the Authorization for Use of Military Force on 14 September 2001 (Pub L 107–40; 115 Stat. 224 2001) and the Patriot Act (Pub L 107–56;15 Stat. 272 2011) in the US, and the Terrorism Act 2006 in the United Kingdom.

  39. His point is well made: the increased powers were certainly significantly less broad than the agencies involved had sought, with the legislatures in both jurisdictions reining in the overreach of police and the military. Responses to national emergencies do not necessarily generate increases in powers that go beyond reasonable limits in the context of the emergency [94, 1190].

  40. In London, on 22 July 2005, a little over two weeks after the co-ordinated bomb attacks of 7 July, police shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes. Menezes was in no way associated with the 7/7—or any other—bombings, but was misidentified as being in some way implicated in terrorist activities. Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at close range and died at the scene—overkill or inefficient, even by Dredd standards.

  41. As George Bush observed: "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated" [12].

  42. Many seem to have become desensitised to the routine outrages against the norms of democracy in the United States. The loss of a democratic sensibility across large swathes of the US population is reflected in the absence of outrage (and, in fact, a warm embrace) of the assaults on core democratic institutions by the President: “The horribly offensive image he [Donald Trump] spread to his millions of followers isn’t the subject of any stories on the front page of major American newspapers. … The unthinkable has become routine” [52].

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Thomas, M. The Dredd-Ful Day of Judgement: Judicial Models and the Twilight of the West. Int J Semiot Law 35, 2107–2142 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09822-0

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