Richard Humphreys
WHAT AN intriguing coupling Judge Richard Humphreys and loyalist activist Jamie Bryson make in their collaboration on the recently published Constitutional Balance, the Acts of Union and the Principle of Consent. Jamie is one of the most vocal critics of the Northern Ireland Protocol – a central theme of his document – and was also a leader of the 2013 flags protest. He will have been pleased to have a member of the High Court in the Republic writing a foreword to his paper, which offers convoluted arguments about the Acts of Union and the principle of consent.
Richard Humphreys, it should be said, disagrees with Bryson’s thesis in his foreword but the main reaction to his collaboration with Bryson is not the way in which some unionists seized on his concession that joint authority in the north is out of the question. Rather it is the arched eyebrows in the Kings Inns among the benchers and, in particular, the judiciary at one of their number grubbing around with a street activist and loyalist like Bryson. In other words, this is as much a class question as the national question, as well as the high esteem in which m’luds still hold themselves.
Humphreys, though, may not worry too much about his peers on the High Court bench, some of whom will surely have blanched at their colleague’s joint effort with Bryson.
The latter enjoys the support not just of the DUP but also the TUV’s Jim Allister and those involved in street protests in Belfast.
High Court president David Barniville, however, will know that inviting Richard Humphreys to desist from such an alliance would be pointless and Humphreys, in any case, can claim that his was a legal and constitutional endeavour.
