Lord Bingham: Of Swallows and International Law

Abstract

This paper forms part of a festschrift on the retirement of Lord Bingham as the Senior Law Lord of the United Kingdom's House of Lords. The focus lies with the contribution made by Lord Bingham to the jurisprudence of international law and to its application in English law. Lucid judgments, economy of style and rigorous assessment of the law have been characteristic of Lord Bingham's contribution as a jurist. He has adopted a restrained approach to the exercise of judicial power and deep respect for parliamentary sovereignty and the rules of statutory interpretation. As a national judge, Lord Bingham has influenced our understanding of the role of international law in domestic law. His judgments on sovereign immunity, waging aggressive war, extraterritorial application of national human rights legislation, derogations from treaty obligations and admission of evidence obtained by torture provide a scholarly body of international legal research that will influence the development of the law in the future. Lord Bingham's leading judgment in the Belmarsh cases in 2005, for which he is arguably best known to the public, shows a commitment to human rights and a willingness to consider the principles of international law to identify the domestic rule. Other decisions, such as Jones and Saudi Arabia, confirm that Lord Bingham has not been a judicial activist. Rather, he has insisted upon credible evidence of any purported rule. Lord Bingham's legacy to international law lies in his breadth of scholarship, methodology for identifying the rule and clarity of judicial thinking.