Activist judges are a menace to democracy. Time to kick them out of politics.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has delivered a landmark judgement, effectively ruling that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.

In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland – a case brought against the Swiss state by a group of elderly Swiss women – the ECHR has ruled that the Swiss government failed to implement ‘sufficient measures’ to combat climate change. According to the court’s judgement, there have been ‘critical gaps in the process of putting in place the relevant domestic regulatory framework, including a failure by the Swiss authorities to quantify, through a carbon budget or otherwise, national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limitations’. The ECHR has decided that Switzerland’s supposedly inadequate attempts to tackle climate change violate Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the ‘right to respect for private and family life’.