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Comment by howlgarnish | Hacker News Reader

Quite unexpected! Like many HNers who followed Craig Murray's reporting of the trial (see below), I thought Judge Baraitser was a compliant puppet and the extradition to the US was preordained. Will be interesting to see his take on this.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...

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Given the apartment disconnect between the reality Murray describes in his reports and the reality we can observe today, do you think you'll read his content with a higher degree of skepticism in the future? His headlines are all calibrated for maximum outrage, that alone turns me off from reading them. Edit to eat crow: only one article has a sensational headline

Mind drawing out these differences for the rest of us?

Not really. If you read his coverage it does mostly accord with the final judgement. I.e. the judge rejected all defence claims on whether the extradition request was proper.

Honestly, his articles where so overwhelmingly obviously biased and lacking any sense of journalism that it was actually painful to watch the number of people on this very site enthusiastically promote him as some kind of truth-seeking hero.

It's valid to oppose the Assange extradition, be concerned about the impact on free speech, and any number of other things; Murray is not a reliable narrator on any of these issues, so if you do want to examine his content remember to do so with an extremely heavy dose of skepticism.

What specific incompatibility do you find between his reporting and the ruling? It seems to match quite well?

People on here have already made up their minds about Assange/Snowden etc, even if damning evidence came out against them, they would still find a way to spin it one way or another.

Cases like these I doubt the truth will ever be known/come out. There is too much political BS surrounding it.

It was blatantly obvious where his sympathies lay, so I read them with a grain of salt from day one. But florid (and occasionally hilarious) writing style aside, I have no reason to doubt the factual content of his reports, which repeatedly demonstrated that the whole process was a mockery of justice and the scales were stacked against Assange.

The reality that we read today confirms Murray in that the Judge agreed with the US Government in pretty much every area of the extradition request.

it does not harm Murray nor encourage people to be more sceptical of him.

>> I thought Judge Baraitser was a compliant puppet

Maybe this judgement will make people think a bit more deeply before jumping to ludicrous conspiracy theories in future. In the UK at least judge's are for the most part demonstrably non-political.

> In the UK at least judge's are for the most part demonstrably non-political.

This is not about UK judges being political, but rather about judges being pressured by governments to do what's convenient for the government.

In this particular case, the outcome is surprising.

If a judge can be pressured by the government they're political. Judges (in the UK) have nothing to gain by being political. They aren't elected politically, the roles are based on merit.

Do you mean that the career of judges is never affected by politics? I think, e.g., that appointments to SCOTUS are an obvious counterexample.

How’s the US Supreme Court relevant to whether UK judges are political?

The case is being heard in the UK so I'm only talking about the UK. Unlike the US, court appointments in the UK are not political and not for a life long term. Even the public image of a judge as being conservative/liberal is not something really seen here.

The politics of appointments in the UK is less obvious than that of the US, but it is there. The Secretary of State for Justice, a member of the cabinet appointed by the PM, has veto power over appointments to the UK Supreme Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...

Good point although I think that mechanism is rarely used and highly scrutinised when it is. The government has lost several high profile court cases in the last few years which I doubt would happen in a more politicised system.

Appointment to senior judicial roles in the UK is done through a process that's kept at quite some distance from politics precisely because people aren't keen on having SCOTUS-style politicking. It isn't perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commissi...

(The JAC handles judicial appointments for England and Wales. There are JAC equivalents for Scotland and Northern Ireland. When there's a Supreme Court vacancy, a process starts up where members of the three JACs appoint people to a committee to recommend new SC justices.)

There are Supreme Court justices in the UK who have discernible political views (the retired Lady Hale was left of the average, and the retired Lord Sumption is more to the right) but their political affiliation has a comparatively small role in deciding whether they get a senior judicial appointment.

Nobody talks about justices having been appointed by a particular prime minister, for instance, because it is irrelevant. Nor does their political affiliation give you much of a clue how they are going to decide cases. This is also because in most cases, the Supreme Court sits as panels—unlike in the US, most cases are decided by a panel of five of the twelve judges, usually picked based on subject matter expertise (those with, say, family law experience will get picked for family cases, while those with more commercial experience are likely to be picked for commercial or financial disputes).

Thanks, that was an interesting summary.

I don't think the involvement of parliament necessarily causes polarisation: Germany has a quite similar system to the US, the most relevant difference being that the election is by secret ballot. Germany has relatively apolitical judges.

Instead, I think the spectacle seen in the US has more to do with the role the Federalist Society has played polarising the legal profession, making the politics of judicial candidates interesting to career politicians.

Relevant to the Assange case is not that judges benefit from showing overt political affiliation, but that ambitious judges want to be seen as safe non-boat-rockers - establishment friendly, if you like - because there is the possibility of having appointments nixed by, e.g., the Lord Chancellor.

> Craig Murray's reporting

The first two words explain any surprise here. It's still usable data but the HN-groupthink is still wilfully blind to Craig Murray's habits.

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