A decision by the Supreme Court against the Government’s right to trigger Article 50 would raise profound questions about the power of an unelected judiciary to over-ride the will of the British people.

In this context, it is vital that the judges are seen to be independent. Yet four of the 11 members of the Supreme Court have formal links to either the EU, its courts or European institutions; five have publicly expressed views which appear to be sympathetic to the EU; while six have personal links with individuals who have been critical of the Leave campaign.

Only four have no obvious associations with the Remain ethos. Just one, Lord Sumption, has given indications of Euroscepticism.

Crucially, the British justice system revolves around the principle that judges — and particularly Supreme Court judges — are fair-minded individuals capable of treating all cases entirely on their legal merits, regardless of their private loyalties.

So who are these men and one woman? How do they each view the EU and its influence on British law? And what personal beliefs (if any) must they put aside to give dispassionate hearing to one of the most important court cases in our country’s history?

Neuberger: Praised influence of EU law

1. Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury

Age: 68

Education: Westminster & Oxford

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President of the Supreme Court, who, with his wife, Angela, divides his time between a £3 million mews house in London’s Notting Hill and a country home in Dorset.

Lady Neuberger — a TV producer and one-time Labour aide, who has made films for the EU — has in recent months used Twitter to launch roughly 50 attacks on Theresa May, her Government or Brexit.

‘So many lies, so much ignorance. It’s the poorest will suffer most from Brexit,’ reads one. The referendum is ‘dangerous’ because it ‘reduces complex issues to yes or no’ says another.

A week before the vote, she declared ‘referenda mad and bad’ and dismissed Ukip and Brexit as ‘just a protest vote’. Six days afterwards, she posted a Remain-friendly message: ‘It seems unlikely a PM could trigger Article 50 without Parliament’s approval.’

Of course, one expects Lord Neuberger to ignore such views when sitting as Supreme Court president. Another person close to him with strong anti-Brexit views is his sister-in-law Julia, a Leftish peer who used to take the Lib Dem whip (but became a crossbencher in 2011 when she took a job as a full-time rabbi).

She recently announced she has decided to apply for a German passport due to shame over the referendum result, criticising the ‘anti-immigrant’ nature of the Leave campaign.

Neuberger was until recently a governor of the University of the Arts, London — whose vice-chancellor, Jeremy Till, emailed students on the day after the EU referendum to say that the Leave vote ‘breaks my heart’, adding: ‘I make no apologies in sharing my shock and dismay.’

As for Neuberger, he has expressed views that betray an empathy with EU legal institutions. In 2013, he told The Times he would oppose withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, favouring a ‘dialogue’ with Strasbourg.

In August, he praised the influence of the EU on common law in the UK, saying: ‘Studying and sometimes applying the reasoning of the Strasbourg court has led UK courts to take a more principled and structured approach.’

Last week’s Spectator magazine reported that he recently told an acquaintance ‘the High Court would be right to find against the Government and that he would support it’.

All of which has prompted Eurosceptic MPs to call for Neuberger to stand down from next week’s hearing. Tory Andrew Rosindell says: ‘Clearly, his position is compromised.’ It must be noted that the Supreme Court’s code of conduct warns justices to be aware ‘that political activity’ of a close relative can raise concerns over impartiality.

However, officially, the court is ‘absolutely confident’ there has been no breach in Neuberger’s case.

Hale: Happy for EU courts to overrule UK

2. Lady Hale of Richmond

Age: 71

Education: Richmond High (a grammar) & Cambridge

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They don’t come more progressive than Hale, the most senior female judge in British history, whose coat of arms carries the motto Omnia Feminae Aequissimae, meaning ‘women are equal to everything’.

A prominent critic of the tradition of wigs being worn in court, she achieved prominence as a Law Commissioner during the Eighties and Nineties making countless pronouncements said to have undermined the institution of marriage. ‘We should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose,’ reads one such remark, from an academic essay.

In another typical article, she asked: ‘Do we still think it necessary, desirable or even practicable to grant marriage licences to enter into relationships?’ Her own marital history seemed to dovetail with this theme. In 1984, shortly after being appointed to the Commission, she left first husband John Hogget for a fellow commissioner, Julian Farrand.

They married just 12 days after the divorce came through. Today, she and Farrand have homes in Westminster and Richmond, North Yorkshire, where his Remain activist son, Benjamin, is occasionally resident.

She recently backed a European Court of Human Rights ruling over votes for prisoners, and in a 2015 speech in Oxford spoke favourably about the process via which European courts can overrule British ones.

Most troubling, though, was a recent speech in which she suggested the Government might have to create a ‘comprehensive replacement’ for the European Communities Act before triggering Article 50, which could delay Brexit for years.

Critics said these comments risked breaking the fundamental rule of litigation: that judges should respond to arguments made in court, not introduce them into a debate beforehand.

They also wondered how her speech conformed with the Supreme Court’s Guide to Judicial Conduct, which tells judges to ‘show appropriate caution and restraint when explaining or commenting publicly upon their decisions in individual cases’.

The Supreme Court responded by saying Hale ‘was simply presenting the arguments from both sides of the Article 50 appeal in an impartial way for an audience of law students.’

Mance: Made fawning speeches in Luxembourg

3. Lord Mance

Age: 73

Education: Charterhouse & Oxford

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Began his career at a Hamburg law firm in the early Sixties, and has retained intimate links with the European legal establishment ever since.

He represented the UK on the Council of Europe’s Consultative Council of European Judges (an advisory body of the Council of Europe) for over a decade, and served on the Lords EU Select Committee.

His enthusiasm for the European project was made clear in 2013, soon after David Cameron announced an in-out referendum, when he said: ‘I remain an optimist that future developments will meet the concerns of all but the most extreme Eurosceptics and that the UK’s relationship with the Court of Justice will continue.’

Last year, he made a fawning speech in Luxembourg upon the retirement of Vassilios Skouris as President of the European Court of Justice, declaring that his presidency has ‘seen a powerful reaffirmation of the autonomous and binding nature of EU law’.

His wife Dame Mary Arden is a Lady Justice of Appeal, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

She sits on the Advisory Board of the King’s College London Centre of European Law — whose president, Sir Francis Jacobs, spent 18 years as Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Communities and worked as an official at the European Commission of Human Rights.

Director of King’s College Centre of European Law’s is Andrea Biondi, a pro-Remain activist who on Twitter said of the referendum vote: ‘No plans no competence, just mediocrity. The whole next UK generation that voted Remain do not deserve this political class.’

Lord Mance’s son, Henry, works as political correspondent for the Financial Times, the anti-Brexit newspaper whose editor Lionel Barber has been offered a Legion d’Honneur for the title’s ‘positive role’ in the European debate.

On Twitter, Mance Jr this week mocked Ukip and recently criticised the Telegraph for attacking judges who reached the original High Court Article 50 decision.

Mance’s daughter, Abigail, is married to management consultant David Bosomworth — whose Twitter feed alleges that Brexiteers have decided to ‘tank the pound, make prices soar, destroy the economy and stoke xenophobia’.

Kerr: Championed the Human Rights Act

4. Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore

Age: 68

Education: St Colman’s Newry (a top boys’ boarding school in Ulster) & Queen’s Belfast

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Dubbed a ‘human rights hero’ by delegates at a conference organised by Justice, the campaigning human rights organisation, he is a former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.

In 2001, he sat as an ad hoc judge in the European Court of Human Rights — an episode curiously missing from his official CV on the Supreme Court’s website — and has since made it known that he approves of the incorporation of EU law into British justice.

In a 2014 speech, he championed the Human Rights Act, saying: ‘Citizens of the UK are as much Europeans as anybody else and are entitled to cast a jealous eye on the rights of their brethren in the rest of Europe.’

Despite such opinions, Kerr is adamant that they will not influence his Supreme Court role in the Article 50 case, telling Radio 4 that it is his job to ‘apply the law’ uninfluenced by ‘personal views’.

Clarke: Opposed efforts to subvert Commons

5. Lord Clarke of Stone-Cum-Ebony

Age: 73

Education: Oakham & Cambridge

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A barrister for 27 years and a judge for 23 more, he is the oldest and perhaps most experienced member of the Supreme Court, having been the first justice to be appointed directly to it in 2009. He’s best known for conducting the safety inquiries such as the one into the Marchioness riverboat tragedy on the Thames.

He has no known ties to the EU or to European institutions, and has opposed previous attempts by the court to subvert Parliament.

6. Lord Sumption

Age: 67

Education: Eton & Oxford

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Regarded as the most brilliant advocate of his generation. Has acted as a barrister for a wide range of clients — such as the Government in the Hutton Inquiry into the Iraq war and Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

Sumption: Said his £1.6m salary was 'puny'

In 2001, he was named as one of the ‘million-a-year’ club of top barristers by the Guardian, but responded by claiming his ‘puny £1.6 million a year’ was dwarfed by earnings in the worlds of business, sports and entertainment.

The only Supreme Court member who hasn’t previously served as a full-time judge, he’s also thought to be the most Eurosceptic member, thanks (in part) to a 2013 speech in which he said the European Court of Human Rights exceeded legitimate powers and ‘undermines the democratic process’.

His daughter, Madeleine, is director of Oxford University’s migration observatory, an impartial research organisation whose studies have been quoted by both the Leave and Remain campaigns. He is director of the English National Opera, whose chief executive Cressida Pollock gave a pre-referendum interview saying: ‘My biggest concern — and that of all arts organisations — is Brexit.’

He also sits on the board of the Royal Academy of Music, whose leading guest conductor Yan Tortelier wrote to the Guardian in June describing the Brexit lobby as ‘upsetting,’ and ‘rather offensive, if not Trumpesque’.

Reed: Ex-head of Eu Forum of Judges

7. Lord Reed

Age: 60

Education: George Watson’s College (a smart Edinburgh private school) & Oxford

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One of the court’s two Scots, he’s spent a big portion of his adult life working for European institutions.

In the late Nineties, he was a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, where he was on a panel that decided the killers of Liverpool toddler James Bulger had not received a fair trial.

He acted as expert adviser to the EU Initiative with Turkey on Democratisation and Human Rights, and as chairman of the Franco-British Judicial Co-operation Committee. Between 2006 and 2008, he was President of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and has made occasional headlines as a High Court judge.

For example, he spared an armed robber from jail, saying he should instead buy victims a bouquet of flowers to say sorry.

And he sparked controversy after deciding that a paedophile who had photographed himself raping a 13-month-old baby, should be jailed for just five years because he had ‘expressed remorse and shame’.

Before joining the Supreme Court, he was a director of Children in Scotland, a charity which responded to the referendum by writing to the Guardian, moaning: ‘We are dismayed that 16-and 17-year-olds . . . were denied the right to have their say in the most important decision of recent times.’

Wilson: Opposed release of Prince's letter

8. Lord Wilson of Culworth

Age: 71

Education: Bryanston & Oxford

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Owner of a string of race horses. A veteran family court judge, he has been accused of straying into areas that elected politicians ought to decide on.

For example, he backed extending human rights law to change rules regarding assisted suicide.

However, in other cases, he has come down against the Supreme Court bossing Parliament around, dissenting from colleagues who last year voted to overrule the Government by ordering the release under Freedom of Information rules of Prince Charles’ so-called ‘black spider’ letters to Ministers.

9. Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill

Age: 71

Education: Eton & Cambridge

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A committed environmentalist, he has frequently used EU laws to support this agenda. Came to prominence as legal adviser to the Prince of Wales from 1988 to 1994, when Charles’s marriage to Diana was disintegrating.

Carnwath: Owns a palatial villa in Italy

After being runner-up for the job of British judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he founded the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and served as its Secretary General from 2004-05. The forum exists to ‘promote the enforcement of national, European and international environmental law’.

Recently hosted a conference on ‘Climate Change and the Law’ at which a speaker asked whether courts might be able to play a role in ‘scotching’ global warming denial.

Around the same time, he ruled in the Supreme Court in favour of pressure group which took the Government to court over its failure to produce an air quality plan in keeping with European law.

An acclaimed viola player and lover of European culture, he and his wife Bambina divide their time between a £5 million penthouse in Kensington and a palatial villa on Lake Iseo in Italy.

Sits on the Advisory Board of the King’s College London Centre of European Law, whose director is a pro-Remain activist

Hughes: Against efforts to usurp Parliament

10. Lord Hughes of Ombersley

Age: 68

Education: Tettenhall College (a boarding school in the Midlands) & Durham University

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A traditionalist who was made a QC in 1990. He has opposed previous efforts by the Supreme Court to usurp Parliamentary sovereignty.

He served as a Crown Court recorder before becoming a High Court judge. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2013, he commutes from a village near Droitwich, Worcestershire.

11. Lord Hodge

Age: 63

Education: Trinity Glenalmond (one of Perthshire’s smartest boarding schools) & Cambridge

Hodge: No professional links to Europe

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A pillar of the Edinburgh establishment. No obvious professional links to the EU or European institutions.

However, his son George is an ardent Remainer who works for the UN. Hodge Jr’s Twitter feed in June called the Leave campaign ‘one of the most disgraceful spectacles in modern British political history.’

Before joining the Supreme Court in 2013, Lord Hodge was a trustee of a centrist think-tank called The David Hume Institute.

Last month, the institute hosted a speech on Brexit by former Cabinet Secretary Lord (Gus) O’Donnell, who said of next week’s case: ‘I have yet to meet any constitutional lawyer who thinks the Government will win.’

Backing a terror suspect and criminal migrants - how judges have been over-ruling Ministers

There have been many cases in recent years of British judges over-ruling decisions made by elected politicians. Here are some of the most egregious examples . . .

Case 1:

An Al Qaeda terror suspect — considered one of the country’s most dangerous extremists and a potential suicide-bomber — asked judges to ease restrictions imposed on his Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) order.

HOW JUDGES ARE CHOSEN IN SECRET The Supreme Court was created by Tony Blair and is the most powerful legal institution in British history. Yet despite the extraordinary and unprecedented sway they hold over public affairs, not to mention the daily lives of ordinary citizens, these 11 senior justices are selected for the job — which pays £213,000-a-year — via an entirely private and at times highly opaque process. In stark contrast to other nations, Britain elevates new members to its Supreme Court — where they sit for nine months each year — without their personal and political views ever being scrutinised by Parliament. The public is given no insight into the outlook or approach they intend to adopt in office. This is very different to the U.S., where the selection of the nine justices who sit on their Supreme Court, the ultimate interpreter of their revered written Constitution, is accorded a level of attention that wouldn’t shame the choosing of a new Pope. Consequently, whether the court’s justices are ruling on power station gas emissions or gay marriage, Americans are rarely surprised by how each votes. In a tortuous appointment process, the justices and their views have already been put through the wringer. The U.S. Constitution dictates that presidents nominate and appoint justices, who serve for life unless they retire, with the ‘Advice and Consent of the Senate’. In Britain, justices are appointed via a five-person ‘special commission’ headed by the Supreme Court’s existing president. It contains one senior judge along with one member of each of the Judicial Appointments Commissions (JACs) of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. JACs in turn contain a mixture of senior judges, lawyers and ‘lay-members’. In England and Wales, for example, the commission consists of six judges, a solicitor, a barrister and eight quango-crats, largely drawn from the civil service and academia. Since they are essentially self-selecting, it follows that the Supreme Court is too. The ‘special commission’ meets behind closed doors to select its new candidate, and the recommendation is then referred to the Lord Chancellor, the Government’s chief legal officer, who can reject it only in extremely rare and ‘closely defined circumstances’. Thanks to this process, the Supreme Court is 91 per cent male and 100 per cent white. The average age of members is 68. Nine went to public school and eight attended Oxbridge. GUY ADAMS Advertisement

He said he wanted them relaxed so he could enjoy a ‘normal social life’. This was despite then Home Secretary Theresa May warning that he would contact other Islamic extremists to plot attacks against Britain.

Ruling: Sitting at the High Court, Mr Justice Wilkie said the constraints on the 24-year-old Somali were ‘chilling’ and ‘disproportionate’ and that he should be able to mingle more freely with students at his university to avoid his ‘embarrassment and isolation’.

Reaction: Then Tory MP Patrick Mercer said: ‘If this fellow was concerned about his social life then maybe he shouldn’t have been spending his time in Afghanistan. His lack of social life doesn’t keep me awake at night. The prospect of him having an opportunity to blow himself up does.’

Case 2:

Families of four British soldiers killed in Iraq sought a landmark legal ruling giving them the right to sue the Ministry of Defence for negligence and breach of human rights. Three died when their poorly protected Snatch Land Rovers were blown up by roadside bombs. The fourth died in a ‘friendly fire’ incident when his Challenger tank was hit. The MoD, supported by defence Ministers, said the Human Rights Act did not apply because the soldiers died on the battlefield.

Ruling: In 2013, the Supreme Court backed the families’ legal fight and said the Government owed a duty of care to properly equip and train troops sent to war.

Reaction: Then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said: ‘It can’t be right that troops on operations have to put the European Convention on Human Rights ahead of what is operationally vital to protect our national security.’

Case 3:

Violent thug John Gilbert, convicted of grievous bodily harm, fought to overturn then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s ban on sending high-risk violent prisoners to open jails. The Minister had stopped inmates with a history of absconding from being transferred to lenient Category D prisons after a string of criminals fled minimum-security jails.

However, in 2015, Gilbert, who had once failed to return from day release, claimed it breached prison rules.

Ruling: High Court judges threw out the Government’s ban — branding it ‘unfair and unlawful . . . except in exceptional circumstances’. They said a prisoner’s rehabilitation depended on a period in an open prison.

Reaction: Chris Grayling said: ‘This is why it is so important a Conservative government has the chance to reform our human rights laws and restore common sense.’

Case 4:

Arsonist Barbara Gordon-Jones challenged the then Justice Secretary’s ban on sending books to criminals in jail. The policy had been introduced amid concerns parcels sent into prison containing books were being used as a cover for smuggling in drugs, mobile phone SIM cards or other contraband. Books were already available in the prison library, the Minister said.

Ruling: The High Court overturned the ban in 2014, ruling it was ‘strange’ for the Government to treat books as a privilege when they could be considered essential for an inmate’s rehabilitation.

Reaction: A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘This is a surprising judgment. Restrictions on parcels have been in existence across most of the prison estate for many years and for very good reason. We are clear that we will not do anything that would create a new conduit for smuggling drugs and extremist materials into our prisons.’

Case 5:

Two Romany women who wanted to set up caravan sites on Green Belt land went to court after then Communities Secretary Eric Pickles blocked them.

They claimed last year that the Minister racially discriminated against travelling families by personally examining appeals against councils that had refused planning permission, rather than passing the job to a Whitehall-appointed inspector. (The rule had been brought in following the ten-year saga of travellers camped at Dale Farm in Essex.)

Ruling: Mr Justice Gilbart said that Mr Pickles had broken the 2010 Equality Act and that the Minister had ‘discriminated unlawfully against a racial group’.

Pictured: The Supreme Court in Parliament Square

Reaction: Tory vice-chairman Bob Neill said: ‘This has given the impression that travellers can ignore planning rules.’

Case 6:

A foreign-born rapist who faced deportation claimed he should be given taxpayers’ money so he could travel across the country to see his baby son — despite squandering cash smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. The failed asylum seeker said he was unable to afford the £13.55 return fare for the 130-mile round trip from Hampshire to Kent — and banning him from having extra money breached his human rights to family life.

Ruling: High Court judge Michael Kent overruled then Home Secretary Theresa May last year, saying the violent criminal was entitled to claim travel expenses.

Reaction: Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: ‘Many people will be absolutely appalled by what is yet another abuse of the justice system.’

Case 7:

A Libyan convicted of 78 offences challenged his deportation from Britain on the grounds that he was an alcoholic.

The man, identified only by the initials ‘HU’, argued that he would be tortured and imprisoned in his homeland where drinking alcohol is illegal. Sending him back to Libya would breach his human rights, he claimed. His case was estimated to have cost British taxpayers a six-figure sum.

Ruling: Upper Immigration Tribunal judges last year overturned Home Secretary Theresa May’s decision, claiming it would violate the European Convention on Human Rights because of the risk of ‘unacceptably savage’ abuse the career criminal faced in Libya.

Reaction: Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘This kind of things drives people mad. On the doorstep they find cases like this outrageous. Few people will think this man should remain in the country. He has completely abused our hospitality.’