A Thinning Blue Line? Police Independence and the Rule of Law
* The Police Foundation John Harris Memorial Lecture, delivered by Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, on 2 July 2008.
Shami Chakrabarti is Director of Liberty. Since 2001, she has been heavily involved in the organization's engagement with the ‘War on Terror’ and with the defence and promotion of human rights values in parliament, the courts and wider society. Shami is a barrister by background, a Governor of the London School of Economics, a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple. She has written, spoken and broadcast widely on the importance of the post-war human rights framework as an essential component of democratic society. This article is a reproduction of the Police Foundation John Harris Memorial Lecture she delivered in July 2008. In the article, she examines the role of policing in a democracy, arguing that policing should serve the rule of law and not the interests of the executive.