Imagine reading about a country where the state is seeking to remove the right to trial by jury. Where judges are limiting juries’ ability to reach a collective moral judgement. Where defence lawyers face legal consequences for representing political activists. Where the press is periodically restricted from reporting on proceedings of major public interest. You would probably assume this was another, authoritarian state. And yet, it is happening here in the UK.

Today, the leading human rights barrister Rajiv Menon KC won his appeal in an unprecedented trial. The court of appeal found that Mr Justice Johnson should never have referred him directly to the high court for prosecution for contempt of court; for allegedly defying the judge’s orders not to inform the jury of their right to acquit on the basis of conscience whilst defending the Palestine Action activist Charlotte Head. Today is a day for celebration, but it is important that we do not lose sight of the injustice committed by the courts or overlook the significant implications of this case.

For context, during the initial trials in January, Charlotte Head and 5 other ‘Filton 24’ activists were acquitted of some charges and received no convictions. However, during that case, the judge ruled that Head and her co-defendants could not argue that they had a ‘lawful excuse’ for damaging weapons at the Elbit Systems factory. With this, Menon was later charged over his closing speech, in which he reminded jurors of the principle of jury equity and of their right to make their own moral judgement rather than simply follow the judge’s direction. The case was believed to be the first prosecution of a barrister over a speech to a jury in living memory. It’s possibly the first of its kind.

Here, we saw dangerous signs of the justice system contracting. We saw jurors limited in their ability to provide moral judgement. We saw lawyers, facing punishment for defending their clients. Presented in this way, the situation seems alarming. And yet, that sense of alarm seems to be broadly lacking.

It’s important to remember that democracies rarely collapse through a single dramatic rupture. More often, they erode through gradual backsliding, through incremental acts that begin to feel normal over time. Psychologists describe this as acclimatisation; our ability to adapt to changing conditions, even when those conditions would once have seemed shocking or unacceptable. That capacity to adapt helps humans navigate inevitable change, but it can also dangerously dull our sensitivity to decline.

Seen in that light, we should resist the tendency to treat this as an isolated case about the semantics of court proceedings. We should challenge ourselves to recognise this instead as a moment that demands outrage and action.

The justice system is named such for a reason. Justice is not merely procedure. It is not simply the mechanical application of rules detached from morality or human consequence. Justice depends upon moral reasoning, context, and the ability to ask not only what happened, but why.

That principle has deep roots within British legal history. It was a key part of the argument Menon made in Head’s defence, when he referenced the plaque hung in the Old Bailey commemorating a case from 1670, which established the principle of jury independence and protected the right of juries to reach verdicts according to their conscience, free from punishment or coercion by the state.

And yet, in this case, jurors were instructed not to consider the broader moral context surrounding the defendants’ actions. While Menon highlighted that the factory targeted by activists was not producing ‘fluffy toys’, but weapons sold by a company that produces 85% of Israel’s weaponry used by land forces and 85% of combat drones, such connections were treated as irrelevant. Jurors were urged not to consider whether damaging weapons used to commit genocide might alter the moral meaning of the act.

Here, the prosecution’s case depended upon treating the damaged property as morally neutral. But intent sits at the centre of both legal and ethical reasoning. There is a profound difference between damaging property for destruction’s sake and acting with the belief that you are preventing greater harm. That distinction has long existed within both law and moral philosophy. Importantly, Head never denied her actions. Instead, she explained; ‘I did it whole-heartedly believing that I had a lawful excuse to do so.’

Here, there is something revealing about the state’s insistence that Gaza be treated as irrelevant to the courtroom. Psychology has long documented how societies create boundaries around whose suffering counts and whose does not. Empathy is rarely distributed equally. It is shaped by proximity, politics and power. Some people are protected; others are framed as distant, abstract, and easier to exclude from moral concern.

The legal framing of this case depended upon this distancing, that rendered Palestinian suffering irrelevant to the proceedings. Head challenged this directly in her closing speech, which, no longer feeling that Menon was entitled to defend her freely, she delivered herself. She reflected on the way that the boundaries of whose lives count in court has changed throughout history. She reminded the jury that ‘Slavery used to be legal. The apartheid in South Africa was deemed legal. Myriad evils have been legal at one point or another – but that does not make them justified.’ Indeed, while abolitionists, anti-apartheid activists and civil rights campaigners were criminalised at the time for advocating for expanding rights to oppressed groups, history tends to judge them differently.

The emotional weight of this truth became visible in the first trial, when Menon’s voice broke as he spoke about Head in court. Pausing briefly, he said: ‘I can only imagine how proud her parents must have been. Society needs people like Charlotte.’ Beneath the legal arguments sat a deeper emotional recognition that history is often shaped by people – like Head – who are willing to act according to their conscience even when institutions condemn them for it at the time.

Finally, beyond these larger political questions, it’s important to acknowledge the human cost and cruelty seen in these trials. Whilst Head was found guilty of criminal damage last Tuesday, she was denied bail on account of the risk of reoffending. The judge made this decision despite the fact that she had previously been released for three months without committed any further actions. This young woman, who was denied lawful excuse, who was forced to deliver her own closing speech feeling her lawyer was unable to defend her, has endured significant psychological harm at the hands of a system designed to provide protection.

Ultimately, democracy and justice are not given. They are fought for. Hard won through centuries of political struggle and collective resistance. And they are rarely lost in a single moment. More often, they are eroded gradually: through the narrowing of rights, the shrinking of empathy, and the quiet normalisation of things that would once have been unthinkable. In this moment, it is important that we do not allow the state to obscure or divert our attention. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the actions of the Palestine Action activists, the broader questions raised by these cases should concern anyone interested in defending the justice system. Now is the time to act; to defend our juries and lawyers, to ensure the justice system continues to serve justice.