I have long been fascinated (even mildly obsessed) by politics. However, this is not for highfalutin reasons. Politics, to me, is a sometimesgrubby soap opera. Like a box set, I cannot, dare not, tear my eyes away from the drama. In my doctoral research, I became fixated on what I saw as a foundational battle in this drama – the battle for supremacy over language. In any country purporting to be democratic, it is language that is the ultimate medium of conflict. Violence and intimidation can, it is true, be used democratically, but only when abetted by rules of law. As such, years of tense bargaining and swirling multilayered ambitions are captured and promulgated through humble words.

When considering representative democracy, a principal requirement is therefore that language represents reality to some extent. It is common to define representativeness as the re -presentation of interested parties by competent proxies at negotiations over scarce resources. However, those proxies must also conclude negotiations with a construction of words that represents something meaningful, and legitimate. Words, their grammatical arrangement and their range of possible meanings are at the foundations of political dispute. Even storing these words for future generations is fastidiously regulated. As recently as March 2017, it was finally accepted that Acts of Parliament need not be recorded on durable vellum, after half a millennium of so storing them. Acts will continue to be stored, of course, but on a modern synthetic medium, rather than calf-skin.

My particular route into this battle over language was via the study of judges in British politics. Scorn was poured by some in the media and government on judges as unwelcome interlopers in public policy. Criticism was especially stern when judges ruled against the government and in favour of asylum seekers and immigrants. I wanted to work out why judges were interloping. A rudimentary hypothesis emerged when I examined what precisely it is that judges do, and have tried to do since as far back as Solomon. Adjudication – the only truly pre-democratic mode of governing to have survived the 20th century – is at essence an independent-minded arbitration over what is true, and, where possible, what is just. Truth and justice have, for centuries, been recorded in publicly accessible messages passed between government and governed.