Who warrants the warrant? A “Meta-Entick” challenge to the Single Justice Procedure

When judicial power is exercised by automated process, where does its legal authority come from?

Back in August I ran a fundraiser with my readers to cover fees and expenses for High Court actions arising from what I have described as my “ghost court” saga. Court names that do not visibly map to any tribunal established by Parliament have appeared on summonses generated through automated conviction pipelines. Enforcement has continued without concrete evidence of any identifiable judicial act having taken place, while my own attempts to obtain clarification or supervisory review have repeatedly met procedural obstruction.

My commitment at the time was twofold. First, to pursue Judicial Review in relation to my own motoring matter, where access to lawful adjudication and appeal has been blocked. Second, to bring a more general claim under Part 8 of the Civil Procedure Rules, addressing a structural legal question that sits upstream of any individual case. I am pleased to be able to report progress on both fronts, made possible by your support.

Because these matters are now before the High Court, the tone of this update is necessarily more neutral and restrained than my usual writing. This is not an attempt to soften the underlying concerns, but a reflection of the fact that the issues are now properly sub judice.

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Two claims, two different purposes

In October, a Judicial Review claim was issued seeking a stay on enforcement of my motoring fine while a jurisdictional challenge is resolved. That claim is tactical and defensive in nature. It concerns access to supervisory jurisdiction and procedural fairness in my own case. We have progressed through summary grounds of defence from the Government Legal Department, my reply, and the preparation of court-ordered bundles — an unusual step at the pre-permission stage. The court’s next move is awaited, and is unlikely before January.

Alongside that, last week I issued a second claim under Part 8 of the Civil Procedure Rules. This claim is different in kind. It is not concerned with guilt or innocence, fairness of outcomes, or the merits of any individual prosecution — including my own. It raises a narrow, upstream governance question, using a procedural form designed specifically for situations where facts are not in dispute but the law is uncertain.

Part 8 is most commonly used in probate, property, or trust matters. Its defining feature is that it invites the court to clarify the law, rather than to resolve a factual contest. That makes it the appropriate vehicle for the question I am now asking.

What this claim is — and what it is not

It may be helpful to be explicit about what this Part 8 claim does not attempt to do.

It is not an appeal.
It is not a challenge to any conviction.
It is not an argument about fairness, proportionality, or efficiency.
It is not an attempt to invalidate the Single Justice Procedure.
It does not seek damages, declarations of unlawfulness, or rebuke of conduct.

What it does do is isolate a single constitutional question that precedes all of those downstream issues.

The question being asked

A foundational case in English law is Entick v Carrington [1765]. It established a principle so basic that it now appears almost self-evident: holding office is not enough to exercise executive power. There must be specific legal authority for the specific act in question. If the authority cannot be found “in the books”, the act is not lawful.

My Part 8 claim asks the next logical question, adapted to the realities of modern administrative justice:

By what statutory authority is judicial power attributed to the outcome of the Single Justice Procedure?

This is not a question about whether the procedure is convenient, well-intentioned, or efficient. It is a question about attribution: what, in law, converts an administrative output into a judicial act capable of coercive enforcement?

This is the warrant-of-warrants problem.

Why this question arises now

Historically, judicial authority was continuously attributed through visible and embodied acts:

• Parliament created courts

• Parliament vested judicial power

• Judges or magistrates sat as a court

• Orders and warrants were issued as acts of that court

• Officers acted on those warrants

In that setting, it was difficult to ask “which court acted, and how?” because the answer was always apparent.

The Single Justice Procedure, introduced in 2015, changes this architecture. It replaces the embodied sitting of a magistrates’ court with a paper-based or digital process that produces outcomes at scale. Those outcomes are then treated, downstream, as if they were judicial acts of a court.

The administrative efficiency of this model is not in dispute. What is less clear — and what my claim asks the court to address — is where Parliament authorised the legal transformation that turns procedural output into adjudication.

Why Part 8, and why now

In my own correspondence with public bodies, requests for clarification on this point have consistently produced deflection rather than answers — for example, appeals to abstractions such as “it is a general property of justices of the peace”, or assertions that defects can be “cured”, even where the identity or existence of the court itself is unclear.

Rather than litigating these questions indirectly through jurisdictional skirmishes, naming disputes, or adversarial challenges to individual prosecutions, I have chosen to step above that terrain. The Part 8 claim asks the High Court, in neutral terms, to identify the statutory basis (if any) by which judicial power is attributed to SJP outcomes.

The entire claim runs to just 11 pages. Its essence is a single request for legal clarification.

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No winners, no losers — only information

This claim is not framed in terms of success or failure. Any outcome is informative.

The court may identify the relevant statutory provisions.
It may conclude that attribution is implicit.
It may decline to rule, for principled reasons.
It may provide a different analysis altogether.

Whether the State engages directly with the question of attribution, or resists legal clarity, is itself diagnostic. Each outcome establishes a legal datum from which downstream questions — including continuity of court identity, enforcement authority, and procedural safeguards — can be measured coherently.

This reflects a deliberate withdrawal from adversarial posture. I am not seeking to collapse systems or provoke confrontation. I am asking the legal system to look into its own books and say what authority is there — or is not — to do what is being done.

Entick, updated

John Entick did not undermine the English legal system by insisting that the State show its warrant before ransacking his home. He strengthened it, by reaffirming a simple test that has endured for centuries: lawful power must be traceable to lawful authority.

My claim stands in that tradition, adapted to a world of automation and scale. Habeas corpus still protects us against detention by “ghost courts”. Fines and financial penalties, however, operate in a space where constitutional rigour has quietly softened, and where enforcement can proceed without the same visibility of authority.

The question I have placed before the High Court is simply this (expressed for public consumption):

Where, in the books, is the licence to enforce a conviction produced by a procedure whose attribution to a court is constitutionally under-specified?

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A closing note

It is rare for a first-principles legal issue of this nature to be isolated from questions of policy, reasonableness, or outcomes. Precisely because it concerns inputs rather than results — the existence of power, not its exercise — it lends itself to quiet clarification rather than public controversy.

My hope is that this claim is received not as a challenge to authority, but as an opportunity for institutional self-audit and repair. If the Single Justice Procedure is understood as a learning prototype rather than a settled constitutional endpoint, reform remains possible while preserving dignity.

I will continue to keep you updated as the case progresses. That this work is being carried out by a litigant in person, supported by readers, and assisted by state-of-the-art machine learning tools is itself unusual. It has been a difficult road, but there remains a genuinely constructive outcome on offer — one that leaves the justice system better equipped for an era of automation, AI, and mass civic audit.