Connect/Eddie Holt: As a British law lord, James Hutton is publicly referred to as "Lord Hutton". He used to be Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice, in which role he was referred to as Sir Brian Hutton (Brian being his second name).
The designation "law lord" makes him sound like a Dr Who or Star Wars character. It suggests an intergalactic, incontrovertible, omniscient embodiment of truth.
But James Hutton is, of course, a man - a mere mortal like the rest of us. He is an expert in his own area of law - marshalling facts - and his expertise deserves respect. He may be correct in saying the desire of Tony Blair's government for a more powerful dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons might have "subconsciously influenced" spooks to make its wording stronger.
It sounds plausible. Yet it's no more plausible than suggesting that his own subconscious (being human, he has one if others have) may have influenced him to produce his vehemently pro-British government, anti-BBC report. The idea that judges - even judges expert at sifting facts - can clear their minds of subconscious influence is nonsense.
Title, not simply expertise, distances "Lord Hutton" from being seen as James Hutton, the human being. It's a verbal form of legal wig, which confers more power than authority, for the two are not the same even if the powerful would have everybody believe they are. Presumably it also exerts influence on his own subconscious sense of himself. Who knows? Ironically, it may be a human trait to aggrandise expertise. That way, the world becomes a more manageable, even a safer place because, after all, somebody - at least allegedly - knows best. The subconscious minds of British "law lords" are certainly esoteric stuff but then so are the subconscious minds of all human beings.
One aspect of Hutton's report which is incontrovertible, however, is its exposure of the clash of mentalities between legal and media minds. Both have strengths and weaknesses - naturally, because both are human - and both have claims to truth.
Legal claims are usually regarded (even by the media) as closer to definitive because of "due process" and the power to punish invested in the law by the state.
It's no secret that law and media - and not just subconsciously - often resent each other. Media feel restricted by legal control, sometimes fairly and sometimes absurdly. Law often resents - again sometimes fairly, sometimes not - the raw power of the media to influence the public. As a result, most people resent, in greater or lesser measure, both lawyers and journalists.
You've got to hope this is true even of lawyers and journalists and that the objects of their resentment are not always simply the other side. There are rogues, cranks and megalomaniacs in every walk of life - and elements of these in everybody - so that "casting the first stone" advice is probably as wise as anything else.
Anyway, journalists are insisting that the terms of reference - set by himself - in Hutton's report were too narrow. Since no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, this is a reasonable complaint which must still be answered by Blair and his cronies. Alternatively, supporters of legal claims to truth insist that Hutton sifted facts with rigour and arrived at his conclusions with integrity.
The media case is undermined by its retrospective nature: it's too late now to demand a broader frame of reference. The legal case is undermined by the arrogance of previous "law lords". Remember Denning arguing that it was better for innocent men to rot in jail than for the British judicial system to be threatened? Remember Widgery, Bridge, Lane? Enough said.
As the law can, and does, punish gross media mistakes, journalism helped hugely in undermining law lord obduracy.
One of the nastier outcomes of Hutton's report is the damage it may do to serious journalism. Fair enough, it could improve standards too but it's equally likely to inhibit reporting. It may be just an unintended by-product (or a subconscious by-product?) of the report that it could well benefit Sun-style journalism while hindering that typical of the BBC. If so, it could further strengthen Rupert Murdoch, who will chuckle if bitter battles over the future of the BBC are waged. Still, in the most recent survey of public trust, the BBC scored a rating of 92 per cent; by comparison, the Sun scored 11 per cent. Such figures will be changed by Hutton's report, but not drastically.
In Ireland, we face a clash between the law and the media. Sensible people know there's right and wrong on both sides. Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, however, in the spirit of an unreconstructed law lord, constituted his "expert group" on libel reform without one journalist on it. That's all you need to know to judge his attitude towards a "free" press.
And so it goes. Hutton's report is unlikely to change anybody's opinion regarding the attack on Iraq. Such decisions probably emanate from the subconscious anyway. It's never as "logical" or fact-based as journalists and law lords pretend.