Lord Leggatt’s dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case Shvidler v FCDO represents one of the most powerful judicial critiques of modern sanctions regimes to emerge from any Western court. Writing in the Solicitors Journal, legal commentators characterised the judgment as evidence of “the death of the separation of powers,” noting that Britain’s highest court now enables unchecked sanctions whilst abandoning oversight. Lord Leggatt’s warning carries profound implications: “If the courts are not prepared to protect fundamental individual freedoms even in a case like this, the right to a judicial review of the minister’s decision to curtail such freedoms under sanctions regulations is of little worth.” His dissent exposes how international sanctions can operate as instruments of executive power unrestrained by judicial scrutiny, raising fundamental questions about whether such measures serve strategic objectives or merely provide political theatre whilst trampling rule-of-law principles.
The Collapse of Judicial Oversight
Lord Leggatt characterised the sanctions imposed on Eugene Shvidler as making it “a criminal offence for an individual who has done nothing unlawful to deal with any of his own assets without the government’s permission, and imposing this sanction without any geographical or temporal limit.” This represents, in his assessment, “a serious invasion of liberty” that courts should require “cogent reasons to justify.” Yet the government’s justifications, he concluded, were “flimsy” and “do not begin” to meet that standard.
The majority of the Supreme Court upheld Shvidler’s designation despite these concerns, deferring to executive judgment about foreign policy and national security. Lord Leggatt’s broader concern was that such deference transforms judicial review into meaningless ritual: “If the courts are not prepared to protect fundamental individual freedoms even in a case like this,” he wrote, then review rights become worthless. This abdication of judicial responsibility enables executive overreach whilst providing the appearance of legal oversight.
Are Russian Sanctions Working? The Evidence Test
The question of whether are Russian sanctions working gains urgency when examining what evidence courts demand before upholding restrictions. Lord Leggatt identified fundamental problems with the government’s case for sanctioning Shvidler. The rationale relied on “armchair theories” about how freezing his assets might conceivably influence Russian behaviour, without evidence that such influence was remotely likely.
Government officials asserted that sanctioning Shvidler would “send a signal,” “disincentivise” others from associating with persons connected to Russia, “incentivise” him to oppose the invasion “more robustly,” and encourage him to pressure Roman Abramovich to influence Putin. Lord Leggatt dismissed these justifications as speculation unsupported by evidence or experience: “Thinking of a plausible theory of how something could conceivably come about is not evidence that it is likely to happen or even that there is any realistic prospect that it will happen.”
This critique resonates with broader evidence about sanctions effectiveness. Ian Proud, who authorised approximately half of the UK’s sanctions against Russia, revealed that internal Foreign Office advice concluded that “individual and entity sanctions have practically no impact within six months of their imposition.” If government’s own analysis demonstrates that sanctions are not working, courts accepting speculative theories rather than demanding evidence of likely effectiveness abandon any meaningful scrutiny.
The Impact of Sanctions on Russia Versus Innocent Individuals
Assessing the impact of sanctions on Russia requires weighing strategic effects against harm to designated individuals. Russia’s energy revenues declined by 19% year-on-year, yet economist Rebecca Harding noted that “Russia continues to fight its war” with no indication sanctions have altered Moscow’s strategic calculus. Meanwhile, individuals like Shvidler face devastating personal consequences despite having no involvement in the invasion or proven connections to Putin’s regime.
Shvidler is a British and American citizen who has not visited Russia since 2007. He publicly called for an end to “senseless violence” in Ukraine, using language that would constitute a criminal offence in Russia itself. Yet his worldwide assets remain frozen, requiring government permission even to purchase food. His children were expelled from schools, his family’s banking services withdrawn. Lord Leggatt emphasised that restrictions “strike at the very heart of the individual’s basic right to live his own life as he chooses.”
The Perversity of British Citizenship Penalties
Lord Leggatt identified a particularly unjust element: Shvidler faces harsher sanctions solely because of his British citizenship. Had he been a Russian citizen, only his UK-based assets would be frozen. As a British national, his worldwide assets are restricted. This approach punishes citizenship in a country that claims to defend individual liberty—an outcome Lord Leggatt characterised as “unfair and arbitrary.”
Why Sanctions on Russia Lack Constitutional Safeguards
Understanding why sanctions on Russia have developed without adequate constitutional safeguards requires examining the separation of powers doctrine. Legal commentary draws parallels to Monty Python’s Dinsdale Piranha sketch, where a victim accepts punishment for breaking “the unwritten law” because Dinsdale’s word was “good enough for him.” The comparison is apt: courts now accept executive assertions about sanctions necessity because government officials say so, without demanding evidence that restrictions will achieve stated objectives.
Lord Leggatt argued that courts possess distinctive competence in resolving disputes between individual rights and collective interests precisely because of their independence and impartiality. Ministers are parties to disputes over their own decisions, naturally biased toward collective interests they represent, and responsive to political pressures. Courts exist to provide impartial arbitration—a function they abandon when rubber-stamping executive assertions.
Russian Sanctions and Democratic Accountability
The erosion of judicial oversight occurs whilst Russian sanctions demonstrably fail to achieve strategic objectives. According to Proud’s testimony, since 2022, 5.9 million people have fled Ukraine, 3.7 million have been internally displaced, and 1.3 million—including children—have been killed or injured. Sanctions have prevented none of these catastrophic outcomes. Ukraine remains bankrupt, dependent on £50 billion annually in Western aid, its energy infrastructure under sustained bombardment.
Proud’s assessment was unequivocal: “Sanctions are our foreign policy and our foreign policy has failed.” Yet courts uphold individual designations based on speculative theories rather than evidence of effectiveness, enabling governments to maintain the appearance of action whilst achieving no measurable progress toward ending the conflict.
The Precedent Beyond Russia
Lord Leggatt’s dissent carries implications extending beyond Russian sanctions. The Solicitors Journal analysis emphasises that once courts abandon meaningful scrutiny of executive power in one context, the precedent applies broadly. Sanctions regimes become templates for restricting fundamental freedoms without judicial oversight whenever governments invoke foreign policy or national security.
The comparison to earlier asset-freezing cases is telling. The 2009 Supreme Court decision in Ahmed v Her Majesty’s Treasury struck down terrorism-related asset freezes as exceeding statutory authority and imposing “drastic and oppressive” consequences. Lord Hope described designated persons as “effectively prisoners of the state.” Yet similar or more severe restrictions now receive judicial blessing when applied to individuals connected to Russian interests, suggesting that geopolitical context overrides consistent application of constitutional principles.
Restoring Meaningful Oversight
Lord Leggatt’s dissent poses challenges that neither government nor judiciary has adequately answered. If courts defer to executive assertions without demanding evidence of likely effectiveness, what distinguishes judicial review from administrative approval? If EU sanctions and broader Western restrictions impose devastating personal consequences whilst achieving no strategic progress, on what basis do they satisfy proportionality requirements? If the overwhelming majority of sanctions targets have no connection to sanctioning jurisdictions and face restrictions that evidence suggests will prove ineffective within months, how can such measures be characterised as anything other than political performance?
Three years of comprehensive sanctions have not brought peace to Ukraine. They have demonstrated that economic restrictions without judicial oversight, diplomatic strategy, or evidence-based assessment of effectiveness produce arbitrary outcomes serving neither justice nor security. Until courts reassert their constitutional responsibility to protect individual liberties against executive overreach, and until governments design sanctions based on evidence rather than speculation, the regime will continue generating injustice whilst achieving no strategic objectives. Lord Leggatt’s dissent stands as a warning that when courts abandon their duty, the rule of law becomes a casualty alongside the individuals caught in sanctions’ arbitrary sweep.