Corner House Research is a non-governmental organization involved in the Campaign Against Arms Trade coalition.

The Corner House applied for judicial review of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) decision to stop investigating BAE Systems.

The UK government gave arms in return for 600,000 barrels (95,000 cubic metres) of crude oil per day.

Moses LJ and Sullivan J held the Director of the Serious Fraud Office violated the rule of law by dropping investigation into bribery charges against BAE Systems.

The principle we have identified is that submission to a threat is lawful only when it is demonstrated to a court that there was no alternative course open to the decision-maker.The House of Lords held the possible consequences that might flow from pursuing the investigation were considered to be sufficiently serious to persuade the House that the Director’s decision was lawful.

But the Ambassador did not give the Director to understand that the contingency of which he warned was remote or improbable, the potential loss of life in the present case was much greater and the threat here was to those whose safety it is the primary duty of the British authorities to protect.

Such an approach involves no affront to the rule of law, to which the principles of judicial review give effect (see R (Alconbury Developments Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions [2001] UKHL 23, [2003] 2 AC 295, para 73, per Lord Hoffmann).Lord Hoffmann and Lord Rodger agreed.

It is extremely distasteful that an independent public official should feel himself obliged to give way to threats of any sort.

For these reasons, although I would wish that the world were a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this, I agree that his decision was lawful and this appeal must be allowed.Lord Brown gave a concurring opinion.

As Lord Bingham has explained, the Director (and the Attorney General to whose superintendence he was subject) gave prolonged and profound thought to the implications for the rule of law in suspending this investigation in response to the Saudi Arabian threat.