E NGLISH JUDGES are used to obscurity. Unlike their American counterparts, even the most senior can count on being recognised only in the warren of streets between High Holborn and the Thames that comprise London’s legal quarter. Their fondness for Latin does not help.

That changed last year when the Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament—prorogation, in the jargon—for five weeks was unlawful. Brenda Hale, the court’s then president, delivered the judgment live on television. Soon afterwards, a children’s book about “Judge Brenda” was published, declaring her “equal to everything”. The Guardian pronounced the spider brooch she wore to read the judgment the year’s “most potent accessory”.

The government is less taken with the court’s new-found fame. Mr Johnson criticised the prorogation ruling, despite accepting its legitimacy. Now that his Conservative Party has been re-elected with a large majority, he has the chance to act. He promises to establish a commission on the constitution, democracy and rights to review the separation of powers within months. Others in government prefer earthier phrases, reportedly talking of the need to “get the judges sorted”. You do not have to be a “superforecaster” of the sort championed by Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s strategic adviser, to see trouble ahead.

Mr Johnson’s decision on February 13th to appoint Suella Braverman as attorney-general raised expectations that a battle is brewing. Her predecessor, Geoffrey Cox, shared the prime minister’s concerns about the judgment but attempted to dampen speculation about the commission’s scope, insisting the government would not “rush headlong into impetuous reform”. Ms Braverman, by contrast, has fanned the flames. She wrote last month that judges have made a “chronic and steady encroachment” on political turf. Invoking the Brexiteers’ favourite slogan, she urged Parliament to “take back control”.

What that means in practice is unclear. The commission’s terms of reference have yet to be published, but the judges’ critics are keen for it to consider pruning judicial review, the process for challenging the legality of executive actions, beefing up political oversight of judicial appointments and perhaps even whether the country’s most senior appeal judges ought to sit in the House of Lords, as they did until 2009, rather than in a separate Supreme Court. Nor does the commission have a chairman. One government cheerleader quipped that Lady Hale, now retired from the court, “shouldn’t wait by the phone”.

The government’s disdain for recent judgments has received the most publicity. Ms Braverman takes aim at the Supreme Court’s ruling, in 2017, that the government could not trigger Article 50, the mechanism by which it left the European Union, without a parliamentary vote. But its beef is not constrained to a handful of rulings, nor to the Supreme Court. Mr Johnson’s manifesto mooted changes to judicial review so that it is “not abused to conduct politics by another means”. Some Tories have long argued that interest groups have hijacked judicial review and that judges are straying from ensuring ministers stick to the law into evaluating the merits of policies. The title of the government’s main booklet of legal advice, “The Judge Over Your Shoulder”, paints its own picture.

Jonathan Sumption, a former supreme-court judge, lent that charge intellectual heft last year with a series of lectures on “law’s expanding empire”. Policy Exchange, a think-tank, runs a judicial power project, highlighting claims of “judicial overreach”. It is true that senior judges are doing more than in the past. The critics are right that the annual tally of judicial reviews has jumped, from a hundred or so in the 1970s to several thousand now. Judges are not immune: building work on the new Supreme Court was itself subject to an application for judicial review.

Others argue that the rise simply reflects the growing size of the statute book and the powers exercised by the state. Parliament passes 30 or so new laws a year, and they are growing chunkier. From 1930-50, the average act was 16 pages long. It now typically runs to 86 pages. Some cases are the “inevitable consequence of the development of people’s individual rights”, says Charles Falconer, a former lord chancellor. Tabloids are fond of accusing judges of placing too much emphasis on the human rights of prisoners or terrorists, but politicians instructed them to do so. Under the Human Rights Act of 1998, judges must evaluate whether or not domestic law is “compatible” with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The biggest growth category is immigration. In fact, apart from such cases, the number of judicial reviews has remained roughly flat since the millennium. It is hardly surprising that, since successive governments have introduced more immigration laws, Home Office decisions are more regularly being challenged in court, says Joe Tomlinson of the University of York. The data do not suggest widespread abuse of the system. An academic study commissioned by the Public Law Project, a charity, found that only 3% of a sample of judicial reviews were brought by activist groups. Though several more may have been brought by people acting on behalf of such groups, most claims are made by individuals. Paul Craig of Oxford University accuses judges’ critics of cherry-picking cases. Academics will always disagree about interpretations of the law in particular cases, he says; that does not amount to evidence of systemic failure. Besides, since the courts have no power to strike down legislation—as they do in America—Parliament is always free to clarify its wishes with a new law.

One difficulty the commission will face is that the critics of the current dispensation do not agree on their diagnosis of the problem. For instance, Richard Ekins, another Oxford don who runs the judicial power project, reckons the prorogation judgment was a “pretty shocking” example of judges’ willingness to remake constitutional law on the fly. Lord Sumption thinks it was perfectly sound.

Nor do the critics agree on the prescriptions for reform. Mr Ekins wants a Constitutional Restoration Act to reverse the effects of the prorogation judgment, rename the Supreme Court and increase ministerial involvement in judicial appointments. Lord Sumption, meanwhile, essentially wants the judges to have a stiff word with themselves.