Then on Tuesday, he signalled that the government might be prepared to shift on its proposal to jail terror suspects without charge for up to three months.
While Italians authorities are seen as having broad powers, police do not have special powers to detain terror suspects without charge.
It creates a new offence of "advocating terrorism" and extends to 2025 ASIO's powers to detain and question suspects without charge; those powers had been due to expire next year.
Finally forced to concede defeat over controversial plans to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days, after the Lords overwhelmingly rejects the proposal by 191 votes.
Britain's existing 28-day limit on holding terror suspects without charge is already far longer than that for any comparable democracy, according to a study to be published tomorrow.
As senior law lord he ruled that detention of foreign terror suspects without charge breached their human rights, and after retiring in 2008 he argued that Britain's invasion of Iraq in 2003 broke international law.
2008 13 October Forced to concede defeat over controversial plans to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days, after the House of Lords overwhelmingly rejects the proposal by 191 votes.
The government's own human rights watchdog threatened last night to launch a legal challenge to Labour's plan to introduce a law that would let police detain terror suspects without charge for 42 days.
The government lost a vote on one clause of the bill allowing 90 days' detention for terror suspects without charge, and it is now in a battle with the Lords over a clause allowing an offence of "glorifying" terrorism.
The government again sought the power to jail terrorism suspects without charge for up to 42 days, and the proposal brought immediate pledges of defeat from opposition parties and outrage from civil rights groups.
The report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, issued on Wednesday, said the police and military routinely held suspects without charge for longer than the legal limit of 72 hours.
