What is the 'it'?

At one point in the book, I state the view – not so startling when read in context, I hope – that you can probably let your judge dangle all but the most egregious of dangling participles.

But what kind of dangling participle would be egregious enough to warrant an associate’s attention? I think I found one:

“Like every other member of the majority, the stated principle was irrelevant to this conclusion.”

First things first: what is a dangling participle? In simple terms – the only terms I understand – the dangling participle is a grammatical infelicity that is capable of being committed whenever there is an unstated actor in the first part of a sentence. The identity of that actor should be resolved in the second part of the sentence – ideally at the very start of the second part of the sentence, but at least close enough to avoid the possibility of it being lost or misunderstood.

In the above sentence, what needed to be revealed was the identity of the person who was “like” every other member of the majority. Can you see it? Like Wally, it’s not easy to find. Unlike Wally, it’s not actually there at all. I couldn’t let that one go; as a sentence it makes no sense. And it shouldn’t really make any difference if the relevant judge or judges are given a name before or after this particular sentence. The sentence itself is still a nonsense.

The absent actor must be named – or, at least, referred to. The judge could probably have gotten away with something like the following, which would land (just) on the acceptable side of “egregious”:

“Like every other member of the majority, the stated principle was irrelevant to his Honour’s conclusion.”

That sentence would still technically contain a dangling participle, because on a literal reading it would be “the stated principle” that was “like every other member of the majority”. But that is such an unlikely reading of the sentence that it can probably be disregarded: the reader is going to be looking for a reference to another “member of the majority” and, lo, the reader will find one. It isn’t where it would ideally be; rather, like Wally, it is hidden in the background, but nevertheless it should be readily discoverable by the observant reader. And that, I would say, makes it okay.