Lord Steyn: Judge who opposed Tony Blair and George Bush over Iraq war and Guantanamo

Law lord Johan Steyn was a principled champion of basic human rights, free speech, democracy and the rule of law, and his liberal and often outspoken views angered many, not least the Blair and Bush administrations following the Iraq War and its aftermath.

His outspokenness resulted in the Blair Government breaking with precedent to block his appointment to a House of Lords’ judicial committee. It was the first time that a government had ever sought, and obtained, an alteration in the composition of this judicial committee.

During his 10 years as a law lord, Steyn never opened his mouth in the chamber of the House of Lords, believing that judges should play no part in Parliament. However, throughout his years on the bench, his strongly held views made themselves heard, but only through his court judgments, lectures to lawyers and fellow judges, and articles in academic journals.

He was also a leading advocate of the principle that judges should not defer to Parliament and politicians simply because politicians are accountable to the electorate. Judges too have a duty to the public, he argued, and should not simply take ministers’ word for it, but should probe and seek evidence.

In November 2003, Steyn, a native Afrikaner, made headlines as a serving judge when the international media picked up a lecture to colleagues in which he branded Guantanamo Bay “a monstrous failure of justice, which is a hellhole of utter lawlessness”. He said that America’s trial by military tribunal amounted to “a kangaroo court which makes a mockery of justice”. His card was marked by the British Government.

Steyn then publicly attacked Lord Hoffmann, a fellow law lord and Afrikaner, for suggesting that the courts should not interfere with certain government decisions. “In troubled times,” he noted, “there is an ever-present danger of the seductive but misconceived judicial mindset that ‘after all, we are on the same side as the government’.” This, he added, was a “slippery slope, which tends to sap the will of judges to face up to a government guilty of abuse of power”.

Two years earlier, when Britain introduced executive detention without trial, Steyn had responded by delivering another scathing lecture to the judiciary. He expressed the view that the UK opt-out from the European convention on human rights, which the Government had to do to bring in the legislation, was “not justified”.

To the dismay of many, having already criticised the then-Home Secretary, David Blunkett, of using “weasel words” in justifying his policy on asylum seekers, Steyn found himself removed, at Blunkett’s insistence, from the panel of law lords (led by Lord Bingham of Cornhill) to decide on the legality of detaining foreign terror suspects without trial.

He retired as a judge in 2005, and became chair of the human rights group Justice. In that role, he dismissed Tony Bair’s rebuttal of critics who claimed the Iraq war had made London a more dangerous place as “a fairytale”.

After the 7/7 bombings, Blair heralded new anti-terror legislation saying “the rules of the game are changing”. Steyn insisted: “Maintenance of the rule of law is not a game. It is about access to justice, fundamental human rights and democratic values.”

Few judges were prepared to be so critical or vocal. But in 2006 Steyn launched a blistering attack on the criminal justice system and foreign policy under Blair. He said: “Absolute power encourages authoritarianism which is a creeping phenomenon ... Our government has been prone to it.”

Steyn condemned New Labour for its assault on human rights, declaring himself to be “deeply sceptical” of a national identity card scheme, saying he shared comedian Rowan Atkinson’s fears that the new religious hatred legislation will criminalise satire.

Steyn also criticised the “flood” of criminal justice legislation, most of which were “half-baked ideas adopted in haste” and later shelved. Like Lord Alexander of Weedon, he considered that the Iraq War was unlawful agreed that “in its search for a justification in law for war, the government was driven to scrape the bottom of the legal barrel”.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1932, Johan van Zyl Steyn was the son of an eminent law professor at Stellenbosch and the grandson of one of the founders of the Transvaal province. He grew up a bookish child and after attending the Jan van Riebeeck School, began his law studies at the University of Stellenbosch before being awarded a Rhodes scholarship to read English at University College, Oxford. It was there that he met his first wife Jean Pollard with whom he had two sons and two daughters, who survive him: Martin, Deon, Linda and Karen.