The problem is that the British do not understand Constitutional Law in the sense understood in the US and Australia. They have not institutionalised the separation of powers. Eg. their highest court - the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords - is an offshoot of a legislative chamber.

So logically though the following passage is to Americans and Australians it is not seen as such in the UK. Let's hope they may grasp the point before it is too late for Julian and others in the future.

The quote:

The Court explained that constitutional principles supporting basic rights were so important that they must be upheld even if Member States chose to ignore them; accordingly, while it was a matter for each State to designate its own warrant issuing authority, this would not apply 'if the authority were self-evidently not a judicial authority'; thus,

… if a warrant was issued by a Ministry of Justice which the Member State had designated as an authority … it would not … be a valid EAW under the Framework Decision … it would self-evidently not have been issued by a body which, on principles universally accepted in Europe, was judicial.

Surprisingly, after this promising start the Court ignored these principles".

INDEED IT IS SURPRISING!

Posted by Andrew Farran, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 4:41:59 PM

" ... Eg. their highest court - the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords - is an offshoot of a legislative chamber. ... "

And is this body still populated by hereditary parasites?

..

Thereafter, I believe that the poms retain a "make it up as you go along" constitution and are also responsible in part for the "Australia Act" which in part altered our Australian Constitution without a referendum and the consent of the people by doing away with appeals to the Head of State in council.

I note though, from memory, a quote from one of the High Court judges who pointed out that the aforementioned provision nonetheless remains in the Australian Constitution, which may make the relevant offending provision in the Australia Act challengable on the grounds that it is not constitutional.

I suspect the answer to the author's question 'do constitutional principles [in the case of Julian Assange] matter?', is that WHERE IT MATTERS, among the UK populace and the Australian populace, they are definitely thought to do so by elements within the US government interested in over-riding constitutions.

Various of the Wikileaked cables are capable of being read, in the light of hindsight, as indicative of the whole Swedish imbroglio involving Assange (including the alleged sexual offences/complaints themselves) having been orchestrated by the US government for the express purpose of its being able to entrap Assange in Swedish jurisdiction and then invoke the 'temporary surrender' provisions of its extradition agreement with Sweden.

Without the Swedish imbroglio, the US would seemingly have been faced with seeking the extradition of Assange direct from the UK, where he seems to have been based at the time. (Perhaps Assange was travelling on a British passport: many who are Australian by birth are potentially entitled to hold a British passport. It would be interesting to know upon which passport, Australian or British, he was travelling, especially as he was seemingly able to have given the slip to an initial attempt to entrap him in Sweden. Did US agencies flag the wrong passport for surveillance, perhaps?)

Straightaway the US government would have run into the problem that, whilst under the terms of the UK Extradition Act of 2003 Assange, if he was to have been British, may not have needed to have committed any crime in the UK to be subject to extradition, Assange is an Australian citizen. As an Australian citizen having committed no crime within the UK (nor within Australia, as has been acknowledged) Assange would appear to have been beyond the reach of the very one-sided UK Extradition Act's provisions.

It would thus seem, that at the time by which it had decided it wished to move on taking Assange into its custody in 2010, the US government would, without Sweden, have had to deal direct with the Australian government so far as any extradition matters were concerned.