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Archive for November, 2011

BEWARE statutory time limits to appeal: if you are late, you are out

Posted in Art. 5 | Right to Liberty, Case comments, In the news, Mental Health on November 30, 2011 |

Modaresi v. Secretary of State for Health & others [2011] EWCA Civ 1359, Court of Appeal Any lawyer dealing with civil or criminal cases tends to think that, if there is a time limit for doing something in the case, then if that thing does not get done on time, the court may be lenient [...]

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Swearing, hacking and legal aid U-turns? – The Human Rights Roundup

Posted in In the news, Roundup, tagged on November 28, 2011 |

Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here. In the news Phone-hacking The Leveson Inquiry has had a star-studded parade of witnesses and phone hacking has dominated the headlines. This week’s highlights have been comprehensively covered [...]

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Rights, responsibilities and the new Aids denialism

Posted in In the news on November 25, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Ironically, during the week when South Africa’s notorious “Secrecy Bill” was making its speedy way through parliament, Helen Zille, Leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance party in South Africa, struck a blow for freedom of expression by tackling one of the  most sensitive subjects on the Southern Africa agenda – Aids. In short, Zille has created [...]

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Bratza bites back

Posted in European, In the news, Judges and Juries on November 25, 2011 | 5 Comments »

I had intended to entitle this post “Bratza goes ballistic” which  would, for reasons I will explain, have been unfair. However, as reported by guardian.co.uk, the new British president of the European Court of Human Rights has pushed back strongly against the “vitriolic and – I am afraid to say, xenophobic – fury” of the [...]

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“Sons of Cadder” – Supreme Court rulings on legal advice during police interviews

Posted in In the news, Scotland on November 24, 2011 | 4 Comments »

Jude and others (Respondents) v Her Majesty’s Advocate (Scotand) [2011] UKSC 55 – read judgment;  McGowan (Procurator Fiscal, Edinburgh) (Appellant) v B (Respondent) [2011] UKSC 54 – read judgment In these two cases the Supreme Court has considered whether  the failure to take up on  legal representation during police interview amounted to a waiver of the right of [...]

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Successful challenge to library closures: lip service not enough for equality duties

Posted in Art. 14 | Anti-Discrimination, Case summaries, Children, Spending cuts on November 24, 2011 | 1 Comment »

R (Green and others) v GLOUCESTERSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL & SOMERSET COUNTY COUNCIL [2011] EWHC 2687 (Admin) – Read judgment In the administrative court, the decisions of two local authorities to withdraw funding for library services were held to be unlawful.  The court held that the withdrawal of a local library might indirectly discriminate against people [...]

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Free speech in trouble in South Africa

Posted in In the news on November 23, 2011 | 3 Comments »

South Africa’s Protection of Information Bill is about to be transformed into a new secrecy law as it was pushed through parliament yesterday, Jan Raath reports in the Times. See our previous post on the details of the law’s scope and potential chilling effect on investigative journalism and whistleblowers. In essence, if this bill becomes [...]

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Investigation team “lacks necessary independence” for MOD ill-treatment allegations

Posted in Art. 2 | Right to life, Art. 3 | Torture / Inhumane Treatment, Case summaries, Inquests and Inquiries, Politics / Public Order, Technology on November 23, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Ali Zaki Mousa v Secretary of State for Defence & Anr   [2011] EWCA Civ 133   - read judgment Philip Havers QC of 1 Crown Office Row represented the respondent secretary of state in this case. He is not the author of this post. The Court of Appeal has ruled that the Iraq Historic Allegations [...]

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Rights on the rocks: Some Bill of Rights Commission responses

Posted in Bill of Rights, European, In the news, Politics / Public Order on November 22, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Updated x 3 | One way or another, by the end of this Parliament, rights protections in the UK will look very different. If you could pull yourself away from the spectacle of actor Hugh Grant giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking, the main event in yesterday’s live legal transmission bonanza was the [...]

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How private are patients’ dental records?

Posted in Art. 6 | Right to Fair Trial, Art. 8 | Right to Privacy/Family, Case summaries, Disciplinary Proceedings, Medical, tagged on November 21, 2011 | 1 Comment »

This is a case in which Philip Havers QC of 1 Crown Office Row appeared for the General Dental Council; he is not the author of this post. The General Dental Council v Savery and others [2011] EWHC 3011 (Admin) – Read judgment Mr Justice Sales in the High Court has ruled that the General [...]

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Hacking, secret justice and access to it – the Human Rights Roundup

Posted in In the news, Roundup on November 21, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here. In the news The Leveson Inquiry begins Last week saw the start of the Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, headed by Lord Justice [...]

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Freedom of information – no longer the Cinderella of rights

Posted in Animals, Art. 10 | Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Information, In the news, tagged , , , on November 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »

BUAV v Information Commissioner and Newcastle University (EA/2010/0064) – read judgment There is no doubt that freedom of expression plays a starring role in the human rights fairy tale. While she is carried aloft on the soaring rhetoric of citizens’ rights from the newsrooms to protesters’ rallies, the right to information, her shy stepsister, is [...]

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Severely disabled man’s care plan not a deprivation of liberty – Court of Appeal

Posted in Art. 5 | Right to Liberty, Case summaries, Mental Health, tagged on November 17, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Chester West and Chester Council v. P (by his Litigation Friend the Official Solicitor) [2011] EWCA Civ 1257 – Read judgment / Lucy Series’ commentary When assessing whether a patient’s care deprives him or her of their liberty, and thereby entitles them to the procedural protections under Article 5 (4) ECHR, the right to liberty, the Court [...]

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Climate change: No right to know effect of new EU rules

Posted in Art. 10 | Freedom of Expression, Case summaries, Environment, European, Freedom of Information, Politics / Public Order on November 16, 2011 |

Sinclair v Information Commissioner and Department of Energy and Climate Change EA/2011/0052 (08 November 2011) – Read ruling The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (“EIR”) did not require the Department of Energy and Climate Change (“DECC”) to disclose information concerning the government’s analysis of the potential cost to the UK of strengthened climate change commitments by [...]

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Freemen of the dangerous nonsense

Posted in Media, Poor reporting on November 15, 2011 | 66 Comments »

Updated x 2 | Today, guardian.co.uk’s Comment is Free (CIF) was “taken over” by the Occupy London movement. This has led to two particularly worrying articles being published. Both purport to offer legal advice which, if followed, could lead you straight to prison. For that reason, Guardian CIF goes straight to the legal naughty step, where [...]

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