With deep appreciation for Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls)
Lord Denning had an extraordinary ability to reduce great constitutional principles to words ordinary people could understand. Few were more powerful than the maxim he famously invoked: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you.”
It is a sentence worth remembering whenever governments change, majorities become overwhelming or holders of high office begin to believe that electoral victory confers something approaching unlimited authority.
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It does not.
The rule of law is deliberately inconvenient. It is supposed to be. Constitutions, courts, parliamentary procedure and judicial review exist precisely because democracy cannot simply mean that whoever commands the numbers may do whatever those numbers permit.
Nor does Denning’s principle apply only to politicians.
Judges are beneath the law. Ministers are beneath it. Presidents are beneath it. Parliament itself must exercise its enormous authority within the constitutional framework from which that authority comes. Public officials cannot acquire greater legal rights merely because their offices carry impressive titles.
This is particularly important when changes to the law affect the institutions responsible for interpreting that very law. Judicial
independence must be protected fiercely, but independence should never be confused with privilege. Equally, legitimate constitutional reform should not automatically be portrayed as interference merely because it affects judges.
The test must remain the same whoever occupies office: What does the law permit?
Not what is politically convenient. Not what produces the preferred result. Not what yesterday’s government did. And certainly not what today’s government believes the public will tolerate.
Sri Lanka has spent decades discovering the consequences of allowing personalities, political necessity and institutional expediency to overpower principle.
The country voted for change. Genuine change will be measured not merely by different people occupying the great offices of state, but by whether those offices themselves become more accountable to law.
Be that as it may, Denning’s warning survives governments, constitutions and generations.
Be you ever so high, the law is above you.
It is well worth understaning this precisely, clinically, in the cold eyes of what the law permits. Especially when eventually, whatever office or position one holds for and on behalf of the people will exhaust its natural term.
There is a growing concern and consternation, a combination of worry that has started to take hold in the minds of several fellow citizenry.
Is the present administration led by the President, treading deep waters?
Unfortunately, such is democracy, that the end result will manifest only at the end of this term of office.
That is when the final report card manifests itself. Simply put, it is called the result of the next set of elections.
