by John William O’Sullivan
On May 13th 2020, Mr Justice Charles Francis Meenan refused permission for John Waters and Gemma O’Doherty to challenge the emergency laws brought into effect by the Irish government in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
This judgement is enormously important for two reasons: first, it shows that some members of the Irish judiciary do not understand the gravity of what they are dealing with; and second, it shows that the Irish courts are placing the authority of a caretaker government over the citizens’ ability to assert their constitutionally-protected rights. We should carefully analyse these two trends, as they seem almost certain to arise in court-rooms across the Western world in the coming weeks and months.
The separation of powers in constitutional republics is meant to ensure that one branch does not overstep its bounds and encroach on the freedom of a people. This much, everyone is taught in civics class. Yet the ruling by Justice Meenan does not read like he has taken it seriously.
Justice Meenan’s argument against Waters’ and O’Doherty’s case is rather simple: he claims they must prove that the Irish government’s actions have been “disproportionate” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He claims, citing previous cases, that constitutional rights are not absolute and that if a government acts against them to deal with a threat “proportionately” then the government is allowed to trample on those constitutional rights.
The problem with this argument is that it implicitly sides with government action as against the constitution. The government is assumed to be in the right and the onus is on the citizen to prove not that the government’s actions are unconstitutional, but that they are “disproportionate” given the threat of the pandemic relative to the constitutionally-protected rights they override.
Yet the function of the courts in a constitutional republic is to keep the government in check, not the constitution – much less the citizenry. The government, having access to plenty of legal resources, should be well able to defend itself against constitutional challenges so long as it is acting legally. Citizens, like Waters and O’ Doherty, do not have access to these resources and so the instinct of a court in a functional constitutional republic should be to side with them and place the onus on the government to prove the constitutionality of its actions.
Setting a very high legal bar – that is, for citizens to have to prove that the government has acted “disproportionately” rather than simply to highlight constitutional violations and start a legal conversation – effectively bars the citizenry from challenging their government. It renders the courts effectively subordinate to the legislature in that the means by which the courts’ oversight functions are set in motion are so difficult to operate that only people with very high levels of legal expertise can do so. If there is groupthink within the legal profession or if the cursus honorum is set up to disincentivize challenges to government authority, the legislature will be free to do what it wants.
The fact that Justice Meenan does not understand the gravity of the case in front of him is shown in the previous cases he cites to back up his position. For example, he cites the cases Mohan v. Ireland and Cahill v. Sutton. The first case relates to the constitutionality of state funding of political parties based on gender quotas. The second relates to the statute of limitations on personal injury claims.
These are workaday issues. A general quarantine of society that is destroying livelihoods and standards of living for every citizen in Ireland is not a workaday issue. Would Justice Meenan invoke these sorts of workaday cases if the legislature had deployed murder gangs to take out political rivals? I am not trying to be hyperbolic, but merely to ask at what point a High Court judge recognizes that the constitutional norms under threat are far more serious than gender quotas and personal injury claims.
In his ruling Justice Meenan notes that one of the applicants “gave unsubstantiated opinions, speeches [and] engaged in empty rhetoric to draw an historical parallel with Nazi Germany”. But anyone with a more global outlook and a better historical perspective would see that parallels to Nazi Germany are, in this context, quite appropriate. Not because anyone is insinuating that the Irish government is moving to murder the Jews, but because the way the Nazis rose to power was quite like what is currently happening in Ireland and elsewhere in the world.
In 1933, Hitler did not yet have full power over the country; but after the Reichstag fire, he convinced President von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree to suspend civil liberties. The German jurist Carl Schmitt would later theorise how the rise of centralized power was intimately connected to a declaration of a state of emergency that would eventually evolve into a “state of exception” enabling the sovereign to transcend the rule of law in the name of the public good.
Justice Meenan’s ruling had all the hallmarks of being a product of a well-trained legal mind, but it lacked the historical perspective needed to defend constitutional rights in a time of strife. If anything in the ruling lacked proportionality, it was the court’s inability to recognize the sheer weight and importance of the case in front of them.
The initial Irish High Court case is ominous. It shows that at least some members of the judiciary do not see the gravity of what is unfolding in the Western response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also shows that those same members of the judiciary are much more likely to side with the legislature than they are with the constitution and the citizenry – placing enormous burdens on the latter, while trusting that the former is acting in good faith.
We will likely see this response repeated in areas of the West where the current elite have become insular and entrenched, as they have in Ireland. This does not make legal action against the quarantine impossible, but it does make it difficult. What the Irish High Court ruling has shown is that those of us who are terrified by government overreach in response to the pandemic are going to have to work very hard indeed to make our case. The courts are not on our side.
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Please can we lose this obsession with whether lockdowns “worked” (whatever that means- something that people who talk about them never explain)? It’s a rabbit hole and a largely irrelevant distraction
I have decided that on lockdowns the science, not ‘The $cience,’ is settled – they don’t and cannot ever work to control a respiratory virus. A point the esteemed Dr Mike Yeadon is always keen to reiterate.
BINGO
Indeed. They were utterly useless. In fact, they were worse than useless.
Lockdowns concentrated more people in fewer places for more of the time.
So if they achieved anything, it was probably to increase disease transmission.
It’s all completely twisted up and ridiculous.
Spot on MAk.
The excuse was “we can’t overwhelm the NHS”….But what with the Nightingales! Also, the NHS wouldn’t be overwhelmed everywhere at the same time FFS!
It is of course irrelevant to talk of the effectiveness of a lockdown in the absence of a real pandemic!
And on the topic of rabbits. In Tibetan Buddhist debate, the ‘horn of a rabbit’ does not exist but can still be discussed as a mere imputation that has no referrent.
The cost of lockdown on the economy, public debt, social breakdown and mental health mean it will never be irrelevant.
The consequences of lockdowns are indeed highly relevant, but I don’t think that proving they don’t “work” is necessary or desirable. For a start I believe they are morally wrong. Secondly I don’t think the state should ever have any such power, regardless of the “emergency” – too easily abused. Thirdly the costs – financial and otherwise, including a consideration of a gazillion £s per day to compensate people for losing the ability to lead a normal life – are so gigantic that any benefits can never come close to justifying them. Fourthly, no-one ever defines what they mean by “work” or “don’t work”. People use words like “saving lives” but what exactly does that mean? People quote “covid deaths” – a nonsense phrase. Let’s assume “working” means it significantly reduces deaths from some deadly “virus” WITHIN A GIVEN TIMEFRAME (important) compared to if you didn’t “lock down”. What does that achieve? What are the exit strategies? There’s only one that I can think of that would make “lockdowns” an option with some point to them, and that is if you use the time it buys you to develop a “vaccine” that significantly reduces the threat of the virus. So the whole idea of a lockdown is predicated on a miracle “vaccine” – what happens if you don’t find one, or you can’t test it in some reasonable timeframe? Well, we know what happened – a miracle “vaccine” was “developed” which is neither safe nor effective, and it was rolled out to enable lockdowns to finish, because people were getting less compliant.
The onus is NOT on us to “prove” or even “argue” that lockdowns don’t “work”. Engaging in such an argument accepts all sorts of assumptions that I do not accept (there was a pandemic, saving lives at all costs is desirable, etc).
Except tof, “vaccines” ordinarily take 10-15 years to gain approval before being allowed to market. The suggestion thst the C1984 “vaccines” brewed up in six months could be even remotely ‘safe and effective’ is bullshit of the highest order – outright lies actually.
That’s my point – if you for a moment accept that there was a “pandemic” and that “lockdowns” “work”, the only logical reason for doing one is to buy time until you have a vaccine (or a treatment – wonder why we didn’t get a miracle treatment instead of a “vaccine”….?) and as you say they take 10-15 years (Vallance himself said that covid was too mild to justify a mass rollout, in a text to Hancock) – so logically as soon as you “lock down” you are committed to a rushed “vaccine”, so they cannot be justified even if they “work”. Of course this is all hypothetical and assumes good faith etc, which we are convinced is not the case.
I was forced to defend Boris today, at least in my head after seeing the placards outside the enquiry stating “Boris killed my Mother”….No he did not kill your mother. If on the other hand your mother died from the jab, that is more plausible with the Mandates that violate the Nuremberg Code.
I was forced to defend Boris today, at least in my head after seeing the placards outside the enquiry stating “Boris killed my Mother”
The lows to which people stoop to further party politics keep amazing me …
“Boris killed my mother”
Bloody hell there are some deranged people in the world. Try going onto the zero-covid subreddit. Bonkers!
There were people in masks with the placards, no doubt part of the cult. They will get their wish, the collectivist nightmare that is the WHO treaty, we’re all doomed.
Why do you believe this is genuine? This whole quiry (they’re not asking any questions) is nothing but a carefully stage-managed rearguard action to keep The Narrative™ alive despite it’s patently absurd. Nobody really knows anything about actual COVID deaths, assuming there were any, because a COVID death has always been died within X days after a positive test. Originally, these people were aiming for 100% IFR by simply counting every death after a positive test as COVID death. Later on, this was restricted to a month, thereby statistically guaranteeing a healthy number of deaths while being somewhat less obviously absurd.
People waving placard with statements like “Boris killed my mother!” on them have probably been leaked from a lab and never had one, ie, there’s doubtlessly a Just stop COVID! alliance somewhere which is, not the least due to the enormous amounts of taxpayer money these people managed to extract, extremely well-funded and arranges for such demonstrations as required.
During the first lockdown, a large traveller camp got established on a Reading car park (Hills Meadow Car Park, to be precise). I usually walked past that once per day (or rather, night) and there were always people socialising around open camp fires there. The whole site was a pandemic exclave were COVID simply didn’t happen. The council was doubtlessly aware of that because portable toilets appeared all over the place after a few days but they just let it happen. It’s only travellers, after all, and nobody cares about what they’re doing. The same kind of Labour politicians and pandemic profiteers are behind all manifestations of the Hallet show, both inside and outside of the building.
It’s part of the psyop. The question, repeated over and over, rests on the premise that an extraordinarily dangerous disease hit us all. If you engage with the question you accept the premise.
Like climate change. If you debate whether net zero is effective or not, workable, more harm than good and all the rest of it, you are implicitly accepting that there is a problem in the first place.
The only proper answer to any lockdown questions is one of your favourite phrases: what pandemic?
And with climate change, the same. What climate change?
“It’s part of the psyop.”
100%
The prof is still lying by omission. The very fact nowhere, including Sweden, Belarus, Tanzania, South Dakota, had the wave of death predicted by Ferguson means the whole farago was never remotely justified. Prof is still saying authority can manage virus evolution when it cant, thus he is no more of a scientist than yr average astrologer. I’d rather therefore take advice off Russell Grant than this prof.
Absolutely.
The two examples of this which should really be flying flat into everyone’s face are:
The 2021 Ahrtal floods in Germany leading to widespread devastion and (because of a real emergency caused by an environmental catastrophe) complete breakdown of all COVID measures right at the height of the COVID hysteria. Had these measure been anyhow necessary or effectice, all COVID hell should have broken out in the region where people suddenly had to live in cramped, collective accomodations. Of course, absolutely nothing happened.
The war in Ukraine. As a side effect, the health system in the war zone broke down due to bombing/ shelling and loads of soldiers and civilians were forced to spend their time much closer together than they usually would. COVID immediately faded from everybody’s list of priority issues because of real problems and never managed to make a comeback on its own.
Nevertheless, we have the Hallet panto where people are still dancing around the golden lockdown and the high quality facemask which must have saved us all from a terrible fate. A surreal spectacle which would be more entertaining if it wasn’t to be feared that the reality deniers will again gain the upper hand and force as all to partake in another great pandemic festival of absolutely no real substance.
We also had our Plan – B that never materialized. Will the Enquiry ask why the modelling was way out, doubt it.
But we already knew that, way back. WTF?
Are we still talking about so-called ‘covid deaths’? Dare we not mention the excessive midazolam prescriptions that preceded the huge number of excess deaths? The ‘covid deaths’ with an average age 3 years later than all-cause mortality? The ‘covid deaths’ that appeared to be similar to a real pandemic’s Gompertz curve?
It was a contrivance from start to finish. There never was a pandemic. The majority of deaths were due to infliction not due to infection.
Sorry to disagree with the author, but I’m not impressed. My interpretation of listening to Spiegelhalter in the early days was that he was a master of what is now known as the ‘limited hangout’. He was careful to pick and choose which issues he would address and studiously avoided straying too far into the realms of actually listening to the people who at the time were screaming from the rooftops about the damage lockdowns would cause, the dangers of decanting the sick elderly to care homes and the genocidal Liverpool Pathway protocol, the obscenity that was Test and Trace, etc. If he was so wise and knowledgeable, why didn’t he ever refer back to existing guidance on dealing with pandemics, which was and remains relevant? He was and remains a first class govt shill.
“I mean, look, several years on now David, we talked to you all the time during the pandemic, sort of on-the-go commentary. What have you reflected over the years about what might have been done differently, better, or how you think about it?”
This comment from Evan Davies is the big giveaway and particularly “we talked to you all the time during the pandemic, sort of on-the-go.”
The BBC don’t talk to anyone regularly unless they are providing the ‘correct’ responses.
Yup that is why Hitchens and Sumption was only on the BBC once…Once bitten twice shy.
Yeah, the problem is the fundamental premise.
You don’t’ need evidence to NOT do something. You need evidence to DO something.
They took all sorts of action without evidence. These people act like gods, considering they have a right to act and hey, if they get it wrong, well, honest mistake, because something had to be done.
No. Nothing had to be done. Nothing ever has to be done, certainly not when it comes to telling others what to do. The default should be don’t tell other what to do unless you are pretty damned sure. And even then, if it’s so obvious, then just present your evidence and let people make the “right” choice.
My reply is to WyrdWoman.
Apologies.
Remember politicians are worshipped as god’s so they’ll do stuff without evidence. This is inevitable when you abolish god and worship the establishment instead which is what moet ppl do.
These hucksters are all politicians, only paid a bit better.
This particular bovril, as I recall, kept changing his tune (and has changed it once more!):
‘Some people seem to be interpreting this article as suggesting that COVID does not add to one’s normal risk. I should make it clear that I am suggesting that it roughly doubles your risk of dying this year.’ 21 March 2020
‘Back in March (2020) I pointed out that Imperial infection fatality rate estimates closely matched average annual mortality risk. Based on 200,000+ deaths, their latest estimates show an even closer match!’ 16 Nov 2020
‘In good King Charles’s golden days,
When loyalty no harm meant,
A zealous High-Churchman I was,
And so I got preferment;
Unto my flock I daily preached
Kings were by God appointed,
And damned was he that durst resist
Or touch the Lord’s anointed.
And this is law, I will maintain,
Until my dying day, Sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I’ll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir.’
The whole thing was an experiment – from lockdowns to phycological conditioning to ‘vaccines’. The whole damn thing was one giant experiment. For what reason can be disputed, but not that it was a giant experiment carried out on billions. As the absolute reverse is true, that single sentence tells me this guy is part of the machine.
Infections peaked because infections always peak. Perhaps human behaviour contributes to that as well as what the virus itself does, but if so it’s not a “soft lockdown” but “normal human behaviour.”
“There should have been far more experimentation..” Ha ha ha, ha de effing ha.
They banned, deplatformed, denigrated and as far as I can recall sacked, persecuted and prosecuted anyone that dared recommend ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin C, vitamin D, quercetin, zinc etc etc etc. If it had been a REAL EMERGENCY, and if our government cared one iota about us, we would have been encouraged to try any damned thing and the cops would have been handing out multivitamins instead of arresting and tasering people for being out walking.
The whole enquiry and all these blasted interviews is an ar$e covering episode of elephantine proportions, and an opportunity to promulgate yet more lies.
From the ONS mortality statistics , 17th April marked the high water of the first wave . Given the trajectory of Covid from infection to death , he is probably correct about the effects of self induced social distancing . I did think his revelation about the average age of mortality which he declared in April 2020 was also very important because it should have led to a conclusion that Lockdown was an Economical nonsense , never mind a Social Disaster . The opinion that it was justfied because younger people would infect the old had no relevance . The fact that more people died during the second wave despite lockdowns prove it was all a waste of time .
The faster the young get it (whatever it really is) the faster we reach herd immunity. The 99.97 IFR and average death age was known about by Even and Sir Keir after Keir got thrown out of The Raven pub in Bath. I remember him pointing that out for all to see.
Update for him and Toby:
I think an analogy would be helpful here:
If you wanted to convince a crowd of dim-witted onlookers that the tide was receding because you waved a magic wand in the direction of the sea, you would have to be sure the tide was actually starting to recede at the time you cast your spell.
An astute observer might chime in: “But the tide has already been going back out for the past half-hour!”
“Well”, you claim, “Had I not used my wand to push the tide out, it would have come back in again!”
It’ll be the same with the climate travesty; there’s strong evidence that we are shortly to start a cold period. Unfortunately, should that happen, the climate alarmist will say “there you are our hubristic management of the climate worked”! …and of course will continue to do whatever doesn’t work.
I’m sure Prof Spiegelhalter knows that the cases/deaths curves for the first wave of covid follow typical Gompertz distribution, ie it was decelerating from the start. There would not appear to be any inflection at the point where people took “voluntary action”, or otherwise.
Remember C19 was already in UK in 2019….Blood & stool samples confirm this according to antibodies.
Dude, two words, “Michael” and “Levitt”
Voluntary measures means Government trying to terrorize people into compliance (by bombarding them with vastly exaggerated reports about the dangers of COVID). And they were quite effective at doing so. I remember that I was actually afraid of it when the shitshow started. OTOH, I then said to myself that trying to hide in the cupboard from an airbourne virus was certainly absolutetely pointless and hence, that the only realistic option would be “Carry on and chance it.” I remember being the only patron in a pub the day before lockdown was formally announced. Nightclubs had already closed ‘voluntarily’ by that time because there were simply no customers. That was the last day of my normal life. Next day, the jelly-mop issued his “You must stay at home!” order and things would never be the same again.
Normal life has since sort-of bounced back but it’s really new normal life. All people I knew before lockdown are gone and the crowd which replaced them is much less easy-going, rather spooked out and aggressive. And this includes doormae who’ve become accustomed to being superios and not servants of customers and who seem to have adopted a punch first, ask question later (if at all) attitude towards any kind of behaviour which deviates from the crowd (such as – in my case – men who are and mostly prefer to stay alone). Because of this, I’m still ‘voluntarily’ staying away from any crowds (precisely four attempts at going to two place where I used to be a regular before COVID led to absolutely uncalled for outbursts of violence on each second attempt).
Sometimes, I’m thinking that I’d really like to have my life back from the Covidians. OTOH, I’ve meanwhile mostly come to the conclusion that you just cannot win. Play by the rules as good as you again, well, lad, that’s not good enough, we’ll change them!
They KNEW infections were falling and also that Covid wasn’t dangerous to the vast majority long before the first lockdown.
The Government DOWNGRADED Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease on 18 March 2020, 5 days before the first lockdown because they had that data which showed it had low mortality rates.
If it was downgraded on 18 March (which it was) then they must have assessed the data over several weeks leading up to it; discussed and reached agreement; approved the Statement and announced it. I reckon that’s 3 weeks minimum.
So they KNEW in very early March. Yet neither the QC nor any of the witnesses want to know about that.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
I have posted this before – the C1984 was downgraded from High to Low Consequence because if the virus was considered High C. then ALL potential prophylactics have to be made available which would mean Ivermectin and Hydroxichloroquine and if these were available and as we know they demonstrably worked, then the emergency “vaccine” could not be justified.
That is exactly why they will gloss over that little fact.
Still the assumption that infections started falling because of mass house arrest (lockdown). Just a debate about whether “hard lockdown” was needed or whether people’s voluntary lockdown was enough. A debate about whether scaring everyone into shutting down their lives was enough, or whether they had to be threatened with arrest as well.
The epidemic peaked because that’s what epidemics do. Lockdown had nothing to do with it.
The international evidence is that lockdown had no effect on covid death rates.
A debate about whether scaring everyone into shutting down their lives was enough, or whether they had to be threatened with arrest as well.
I think this was more of a debate for how long the charade could be maintained while those voluntarily hiding at home could still have done something else, ie, before hospitality, schools and most shops were forcibly closed and the outcome was Reality will assert itself long before we can vaccinate anyhing unless we do much more to prevent that from happening. Hence, the almost total abolishment of public life. Afterwards, people still wouldn’t obey the rules but could only do so ‘responsibly’ in private, ie, without this being easily recognizable from the outside.
I’m no scientist but didn’t Michael Levitt (Nobel prize winner and of Diamond Princess fame) produce a Bell shaped graph showing how all “pandemics” play out i.e. they rise, hit a peak and then decline. So by definition it negates the need for any lockdown as they make no difference.