The judgment in the case of Mohamed, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs [2009] EWHC 152 (Admin) (04 Feb 2009) isn’t just another reminder of why headline writers might make court transcripts more fun.

[You can read more about the case of Binyam Mohamed here.]

No, it’s a painful reminder of the inadequacy of global governance. Witness a shared Anglo-Norman tradition of law, and a common adherence to representative government boil down to a couple of British judges asking the Obama administration to kindly release some information.

There is no supreme court, no appeal. It’s – how might I put it? – a little disappointing.

I strongly advise reading the whole judgment (linked above), but if you ever wondered what it looked like when a little democracy begged from a bigger one:

How is this judgement of the Foreign Secretary in relation to the public interest in national security to be balanced against the public interest in open justice as safeguarding the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability?

In our judgement the decisive factors are the other means which have resulted from these proceedings for safeguarding democratic accountability and the rule of law (the reference of the matter to the ISC and the Attorney General) and what has already been placed into the public domain which can engender debate. In the circumstances now prevailing, the balance is served by maintaining the redaction of the paragraphs from our first judgment.

In short, whatever views may be held as to the continuing threat made by the Government of the United States to prevent a short summary of the treatment of BM being put into the public domain by this court, it would not, in all the circumstances we have set out and in the light of the action taken, be in the public interest to expose the United Kingdom to what the Foreign Secretary still considers to be the real risk of the loss of intelligence so vital to the safety of our day to day life.

If the information in the redacted paragraphs which we consider so important to the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability is to be put into the public domain, it must now be for the United States Government to consider changing its position or itself putting that information into the public domain.