Britain's top judge issues warning on deportation

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/mar/05/lord-neuberger-deportation-terror-suspects
<snip>
Britain will have to withdraw from the United Nations as well as the European court of human rights if it wants to deport terrorist suspects to states that carry out torture, the country's most senior judge has warned.

The UK's supreme court is "not subservient" but works "in a dialogue" with the judges in Strasbourg, he insisted. Pulling out of the Council of Europe body – which the home secretary, Theresa May, and the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, both contemplate – would "certainly send an unfortunate number of messages", Neuberger added.

The judge's comments, timed for publication on Tuesday, were made before the two ministers' views were published in Sunday papers. Neuberger also talked about the lack of diversity in the upper reaches of the judiciary, suggesting that appointment panels could be suffering from a "subconscious bias" against women.

"What I object to is … there are decisions which are sometimes simply misrepresented. An obvious example is attacking the [European] human rights convention because we can't send back nasty terrorists because they might be tortured. Well, even if you think we should be able to be send them back … there's a UN convention going back to 1948 which says you can't do that – which stops it on its own, unless we are going to pull out of the UN."