The Weekly Round Up: BSB drops rewrite of Core Duty 8, Mexico’s judicial election by popular vote, and Tory party leadership election not amenable to judicial review
2 June 2025
In UK News
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) have dropped their plans to require barristers to “act in a way that advances equality, diversity and inclusion”. The proposed rewrite of Core Duty 8 would have placed barristers under a positive duty – something that had sparked widespread controversy about the BSB imposing its views of “social justice” on practitioners through “social engineering“. Notably, the rewrite was heavily criticised by former chair of the Bar Council who warned against the unintended detrimental consequences of “radical change”. Barbara Mills KC, current chair of the Bar Council has emphasised the continued commitment of the Bar Council to “equality, diversity and inclusion at the Bar”, but explained the concerns the Bar Council had about the positive duty “tak[ing] us backwards” due to the “lack [of] clarity needed for barristers to comply”. Although, director-general of the BSB, Mark Neale had promised that the proposed rewrite was “very genuine”, the BSB have now come out as saying that they will instead adopt a different strategy drawing on “all [their] regulatory tools” to advance equality of opportunity at the Bar.
In International News
On 1st June, Mexico began to elect all its judges, from magistrates to Supreme Court justices, by popular vote. In doing so, it has started a process of replacing 900 judges at the federal level and hundreds more across 19 state-level jurisdictions, in a voting process that has never before been tried elsewhere. Judges will now only need 5 years of legal experience and a law degree. This radical reform was proposed by the Morena party, who won a congressional supermajority last year and were subsequently able to change the constitution at will. It is a move intended to cut corruption and increase the accountability of judges. However, this “democratic experiment” has sparked concerns about the possibility of low turnout, political power grabs and infiltration by organised crime. Legal groups have argued that the reform will threaten judicial independence. Former head of the Federal Electoral Institute has explained that “the most serious consequence” of the reform will be that it will “absorb, capture, domesticate and control the judiciary” such that the “political and judicial controls on the government” are almost “completely eroded”. For many Mexican lawyers, it constitutes the “death of a flawed, but improving, judiciary” that they had “spent 30 years building alongside the country’s transition to democracy”. Notably, the majority of the candidates for the vote were chosen by the ruling party, and were precluded from obtaining private or public funding. For Carlos Ramírez of political risk consultancy Integralia, the vote is “Kafkaesque”, but for President Claudia Sheinbaum, it will simply make Mexico a “more democratic country”.
In the Courts
In R (Tortoise Media) v Conservative Party [2025] EWCA Civ 673 (23 May 2025), the Court of Appeal dismissed a claim for judicial review brought by Tortoise Media against the Conservative Party. Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos, Lord Justice Singh and Lord Justice Dingemans held that the Conservative Party was not “exercising a public function” during its 2022 leadership election, wherein Liz Truss was elected Prime Minister. For that reason, it was not amenable to judicial review under the Human Rights Act 1998.
Tortoise Media had initially brought a claim questioning the transparency and integrity of the election process. It wanted information about the membership of the Conservative Party and about how the election was conducted. The Conservative Party refused to provide this information on grounds that it was not a public body and was not exercising a public function (as would be required under s.6 HRA).
In the Court of Appeal, Tortoise Media argued that the election had public consequences and led to an individual being appointed to a public office, so should be subject to judicial review. The Conservative Party, however, maintained that the election was a private matter. Lord Justice Singh upheld the decision handed down in the High Court, namely that the “the nature of the act of electing a party leader is private and does not become public simply because of the consequences which follow in accordance with constitutional convention”. The election of a party leader was considered to involve three stages. The first, the election of the party leader, was held to be private. The latter two stages comprising (i) the advice given by the incoming Prime Minister to the Sovereign, and (ii) their appointment by the Sovereign were, in contrast, considered public in nature. The Court ultimately felt that it would be “wrong” to “impose constraints on the autonomy of political parties” given the “importance in a free and pluralistic society of permitting parties to adopt their own rules”, in a context wherein Parliament had “not thought fit” to impose them.
