It might have been helpful if Zoe Williams (Porn judges have set a new benchmark, 18 March) had spoken to some real-life judges instead of recycling tired old accusations about them. “Judges are notorious for ... not knowing who the Beatles are...” she writes. A good few years ago the legal writer Marcel Berlins offered a bottle of champagne to anyone who could produce an authentic source for this allegation. Nobody ever did.
Williams seems to think that the judiciary appoints its own members. “It’s of little surprise,” she writes, “that it faces constant pressure to create a more equitable and transparent hiring process.” Since 2006 all judicial appointments have been made by an independent statutory commission.
The commission’s well-known failure so far to achieve adequate representation of women and ethnic minorities on the bench does not need a cheap-shot polemic which tries to associate it with four low-ranking judges downloading porn (and, incidentally, being appropriately dealt with).
It needs serious questions to be asked about whether the underlying fault lies with a legal profession that still fails to give women and members of ethnic minorities the same chances as white males to develop their skills and demonstrate their ability as future judges.
Stephen Sedley
Oxford
• Your report (Three judges removed, one resigns after claims they viewed pornography at work, 18 March) says the revelation that four judges viewed pornography on their work computers is likely to provoke rage and astonishment because they did it at work, and because they didn’t realise that the images would remain on their computers. But surely the greatest outrage is that they viewed pornography at all. No wonder victims of sexual abuse fare so badly in the courts if those are the images that such men enjoy.
Rosemary Auchmuty
Reading, Berkshire
• Three judges removed and one resigns after claims that they had viewed pornography at work. Have these four judges kept their pensions? It would be interesting to know.
Fiona Henderson
Norwich
• I was disappointed to see Zoe Williams perpetuating the old myth that judges have never heard of the Beatles. When we humorously chided Lord McEwan about this, he said, a little plaintively: “Of course I’ve heard of them - I’ve got teenage daughters, for heaven’s sake. What I actually said to defending counsel was ‘You must not presume that I know of the Beatles.’”
Barry Hughes
Edinburgh
