As the UK government launched its legal bid to wrest back control of Britain's European Union exit, pro- and anti-Brexit groups protested outside the Supreme Court in London.
EU supporters dressed as judges drove past on a double-decker bus, their chants targeting absent Brexit campaigner and former UKIP leader, Nigel Farage.
Protester Ken Kimber says it's obscene the way the media is portraying the judiciary's role as adjudicator on the Brexit process.
"The kind of language that has been used - the headline in the Daily Mail about judges, 'Enemies of the People', well that's just incitement and it's rubbish and it harks back to the Nazi press directly of the 1930s."
The government has appealed to the country's highest judicial body after the High Court ruled last month the approval of MPs is needed to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and abandon the EU.
But pro-Brexit demonstrator Julia Waller says the case should never have gone to court because the British people had already decided to leave Europe at the June referendum.
"I think we are sleepwalking into losing freedom in this country and freedom is a very precious word. We fought two world wars, we've got to be a proud nation. We're not proud, we're not patriotic. We're politically correct and we are turning on ourselves. It's making me very cross, it's making a lot of people cross. There's a very bad atmosphere."
Inside the court, England and Wales Attorney-General Jeremy Wright opened the government's case.
He argued the High Court was wrong in ruling Britons' constitutional rights to remain in the EU could not be taken away without parliamentary assent.
"When it comes to leaving the European Union, parliament has had full capacity and multiple opportunities to restrict the executive's ordinary ability to begin the Article 50 process and it has not chosen to do so. However much they may wish it had, those who support parliamentary sovereignty should, we submit, respect this exercise of parliamentary sovereignty too."
Supreme Court President Lord David Neuberger stressed the case is about law, not politics, and he spoke out about the abusive and violent threats against businesswoman Gina Miller, who has led the legal challenge against the government.
"Threatening and abusing people because they are excercising their fundamental right to go to court undermines the rule of law. Anyone who communicates such threats or abuse should be aware that there are legal powers designed to ensure that access to the courts is available to everybody."
Gina Miller says she has received death threats and needs security to get her children to school safely.
"So the levels of sexual and racial violence have been quite extraordinary, to a level that because I am a coloured woman I don't have any place outside of the kitchen, I'm not even a human I've been told, because I am a primate and should be hunted. You know there are bounties on my head to accidentally run me over, calls for me to be the next Jo Cox, gang rape, whatever you can think of, it has happened. And it's not just the keyboard warriors. It's emails, letters, phone calls, it's a barrage."
If the Supreme Court upholds the earlier ruling, it could derail the government's plans.
Prime Minister Theresa May's timetable is to begin by March the two-year Brexit process.
And it comes as Europe assesses the fallout from Italy's emphatic rejection of constitutional reforms that's cost Prime Minister Matteo Renzi his job.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has farewelled a key EU ally.
"I am sad that the referendum in Italy did not turn out as the Prime Minister wanted because I have always supported his cause of reform. But, of course, it is an intenral Italian decision which we have to respect and it was a very broad debate within Italy. From my point of view we will continue to work in Italy and we have also set the right priorities but I have always worked well with Matteo Renzi."
Mr Renzi's resignation has left Italy in a state of political limbo.
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