The article "Death by Lawyers" by Daniël Eloff, published in The Critic magazine (a British conservative-leaning outlet focused on culture, politics, and ideas), is a sharp critique of how excessive legalism, particularly through human rights lawyering, purposive interpretation of statutes, and judicial overreach, undermines effective governance and ultimately wrecks societies. It draws stark comparisons between Britain (where the trend is accelerating) and South Africa (where it has already produced catastrophic results), arguing that lawyers in power treat law not as a restraint on authority but as a tool for imposing moral and political preferences.
Eloff contends that modern legalism shifts law from a set of boundaries limiting power to a mechanism for achieving desired social outcomes. This "lawyer-led" approach creates elite-driven governance disconnected from democratic realities and practical consequences. Human rights frameworks turn politics into endless justiciable disputes rather than contested choices, transferring risks and costs downward to ordinary people while elites enjoy moral authority with impunity. The result is dysfunctional societies: procedural gridlock in Britain, outright state failure in South Africa.
Key quote capturing the essence: "What lawyers once applied, they now complete." And: "Human rights governance systematically transfers risk downward."
Judges as Lawmakers (Judicial Overreach)
The piece lambasts the rise of purposivism (interpreting laws to fulfill their supposed "purpose" rather than strict text), especially after Britain's Human Rights Act 1998. This displaced traditional common-law restraint and the "golden rule" of interpretation, allowing judges to rewrite or expand laws to align with progressive Leftist goals.
Judges become arbiters of policy, not neutral appliers of law.
In South Africa, post-apartheid "transformative constitutionalism" let courts impose "permanent social engineering" far beyond the Constitution's text (e.g., no explicit mention of "transformation" or quotas, yet courts mandated them).
Britain follows suit with statutes like the Climate Change Act 2008 and Equality Act 2010, entangling reforms in litigation and making moral aspirations enforceable obligations.
Eloff argues this makes judges unelected lawmakers, eroding legislative primacy and democratic accountability.
Lack of Accountability
A central theme is elite insulation from consequences:
Lawyers-turned-politicians (e.g., UK figures like Keir Starmer, Richard Hermer, Sadiq Khan, David Lammy, Shami Chakrabarti, Cherie Blair, Helena Kennedy) dominate, fluent in moral/legal language but tone-deaf to trade-offs.
Human rights claims prioritise grievances over prioritisation or accepting loss, fostering "jurisprudential toxic compassion."
In South Africa, policies like Black Economic Empowerment (racial quotas) and preferential procurement prioritise demographics over competence, leading to 37% unemployment, rolling blackouts, collapsing infrastructure, high crime, yet elites frame critiques as moral failings (e.g., apartheid apologism).
Britain has far more lawyers per capita than peers like France, Spain, or Japan (which has 30x fewer and relies more on norms), producing procedural ambiguity and elite moralism detached from citizens' lived realities.
Quote: "The language of transformation comforts those who speak it … but it does not fix roads, keep the lights on, or build capable institutions."
How This Wrecks Societies
Britain: Rising lawyer influence risks turning governance into endless litigation, eroding norms-based order, and widening the elite-citizen gap.
South Africa: A once-admirable post-apartheid settlement devolved into economic stagnation and service collapse under unchecked judicial/ideological transformation.
Broader warning: This pattern spreads in the Commonwealth/West, where law becomes a luxury belief system for elites who bear no costs, while societies suffer material decay and intolerance of dissent, as seen in Australia as well.
The tone is cautionary and analytical, acknowledging good intentions (e.g., redressing apartheid wrongs) but condemning the outcomes as avoidable tragedy. No explicit fixes are offered beyond implying a return to law as constraint (common-law limits, judicial restraint) and prioritising outcomes over moral signalling.
It will require a profound social program to reign in the lawyers, beginning with the source of the problem, the education of lawyers at Left wing universities.