During the Brexit trial: “Our entry into the EU was a joint effort,” Wilson told the government’s lawyer. “If our accession was the result of joint effort, should our departure not equally be so?”
Decision: Parliament must vote
What else? He was the first Supreme Court judge to have his swearing-in ceremony broadcast live, on a dedicated online channel.
The Uncontroversial One
Lord Robert Reed, 60, served as a senior judge in Scotland for 13 years, and sat at the European Court of Human Rights during appeals by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who murdered the toddler James Bulger when they were 10.
In a 2014 speech on EU law, he quipped that, while he didn’t expect to have his head impaled on London Bridge, he "nevertheless subscribes to the view that it is wise for judges to avoid speaking in public on controversial topics." Judges wanting to avoid controversy “would be well advised at present to give a wide berth to our relationship with the EU," he said. True to his word, he hasn’t had anything to say publicly about the subject since.
During the Brexit trial: “When you are talking about a constitution in which there are a number of important institutions,” he said on the second day of the case, “the court has to be conscious of what competence it properly has to exercise in this field.” Judges are only “part of the picture.”
Decision: No Parliament vote
What else? In 2010, he overturned a five-year jail sentence given to a Scottish grandmother who kept her father’s World War II pistol as a souvenir, not knowing it was against the law.
The Singer