2026-10-20
Am aircraft must have an airworthiness certificate before it can carry passengers.
Shouldn't a court have a lexworthiness certification before it is permitted to try a case?
Martin Geddes thinks so, and has been documenting his experiences to illustrate the point.
But a certificate simply asserts that a set of tests has been devised and the aircraft tested against them.
So for a court to be tested we need a recognised set of standard tests that can be applied before he court can be considered lexworthy. And those tests must be based on a set of recognised standards of operation, standards that recognise both the possible flaws and the recognised defences against them.
"The difficulty deepens because law does not merely describe an independently existing world. It can also create authoritative legal states"
" ... the machinery may become more internally consistent while the original defect becomes harder to recognise"
"A supermarket cannot turn horsemeat into beef by changing its label. But an authorised legal institution can genuinely create legal relationships and statuses through its decisions"
And once we have the Courts sorted, we just need a similar approach to legislationeering to answer the question: "Is this Parliament fit to Legislate?"
