8 December 2010
Updated | Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested yesterday and refused bail after a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court.
He was not arrested in relation to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, but rather on suspicion of having sexually assaulted two women in Sweden. His lawyers have said that “many believe” the arrest was politically motivated.
7 December 2010
The arrest of Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has meant that the Ministry of Justice’s “radical” reform program for the criminal justice system has received less attention then it might otherwise have.
Although clearly accidental, the timing may suit the justice secretary, who has received criticism from within his own party in relation to his plans to send thousands fewer offenders to jail in the coming years. The MoJ have said:
The green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation sets out plans to break the destructive cycle of crime and prison by ensuring that jails become places of hard work, that rehabilitation programmes are opened up to innovation from the private and charitable sectors, paid by results, and that the priority will now be to reduce the reoffending by people after they have been punished.
7 December 2010
MacKay & BBC Scotland v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 10734/05) – Read judgment / press release
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the failure of the Scottish court system allow the BBC to challenge a court reporting ban was a violation of rights to freedom of expression and information as well as to an effective remedy.
Mr Mackay, a retired journalist, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Scotland, challenged a 15 February 2005 order prohibiting the publication of any report of the trial of two men accused of importing and supplying controlled drugs. The order arose in the midst of an appeal hearing brought by the Crown against a previous judge’s decision to stay the hearing. The BBC faxed the court asking to be heard on the order, but were told they could not be heard until the next day. The order became final.
6 December 2010
The head of Sky News has argued in a new Guardian article that justice must be televised as allowing TV cameras in court would help restore public faith in criminal proceedings.
Sky news has been campaigning for TV cameras to be allowed in court for the past year. John Ryley argues that the upcoming prosecutions of 5 men accused of abusing the parliamentary expenses system should be televised as the judge in the case has said the matter is “of intense public interest”. Televising proceedings would help restore the loss of confidence in parliament and politics and ensure that judges who are seen are “out of touch” and “liberal” need not escape the spotlight.
3 December 2010
R (on the application of Philip James Woolas) and The Parliamentary Election Court [2010] EWHC 3169 (Admin) – Read judgment / press summary
Phil Woolas has lost his appeal by way of judicial review of the decision to strip him of his election victory in Oldham East and Saddleworth in the 2010 General Election. He has said he will not appeal the decision.
Mr Woolas had to first convince the Administrative Court, which handles judicial reviews of the decisions of public bodies, that it had jurisdiction to hear the claim. He won on this point. However, once it had accepted it could hear the case, the Administrative court went on to uphold most of the decision of the Election Court.
2 December 2010
Cromwell looks on
Chaytor & Ors, R v (Rev 2) [2010] UKSC 52 (01 December 2010) – Read judgment
Updated | The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal of four men accused of fiddling their Parliamentary expenses. In doing so, it has provided a powerful statement of the limits of Parliamentary privilege against court interference, and of its own powers in our separation of powers system.
The background to the case is set out in my post on the Court of Appeal case. The basic summary is that three ex-MPs, Morley, Chaytor and Devine, and one member of the House of Lords, Lord Hanningfield, are charged with false accounting relating to their parliamentary expenses claims.
1 December 2010
R v Chaytor and others (Appellants) [2010] UKSC 52 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by ex-MPs who argued that the courts do not have jurisdiction to try a Member of Parliament in relation to the submission of an allegedly dishonest claim for Parliamentary expenses or allowances.
The court was unanimous in its judgment. Lord Phillips (President) and Lord Rodger give the lead judgments. The Court held that neither Article 9 of the 1688 Bill of Rights nor the exclusive jurisdiction of the House of Commons poses any bar to the jurisdiction of the Crown Court to try the Appellants.
1 December 2010
Updated – Spiller and another (Appellants) v Joseph and others (Respondents) [2010] UKSC 53 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has overturned the Court of Appeal to unanimously hold that the defence of fair comment should be open to a booking agent which said on its website that a Motown tribute band, the Gillettes, were “unprofessional”. The court has also renamed the defence “honest comment”.
The decision will be a relief to those who think that Britain’s libel laws are too tough and that the fair comment defence – an important element of free speech rights – has become too difficult to deploy. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court recommended in its judgment that the whole issue of fair comment should be reviewed by the Law Commission or an expert committee. Presumably, this will be on the agenda for Lord Neuberger’s upcoming review of libel law. The Guardian has commented on the judgment here.
1 December 2010
When the UK supreme court opened for business just over a year ago one of its most exciting innovations was that, for the first time in the UK, hearings would be filmed and recordings made available to broadcasters.
The change followed 20 years of campaigning and preparation, and was heralded as a turning point in the history of our legal system.
So, one year on, are our TV schedules flooded with live feeds of cases of great social importance? Hardly. In fact, Baroness Hale, one of the court’s 11 justices, recently said that although the recordings are available to the media upon request, “they don’t often ask.”
30 November 2010
Schalk and Kopf v. Austria (application no. 30141/04) – Read judgment / press release / press release 2
The European Court of Human Rights has refused permission to appeal in a challenge to the ban on gay marriage in Austria. The effect of the decision is to make the court’s rejection of the same-sex couple’s claim final.
The decision means that the European Court of Human Rights will not force states to allow same-sex couples to marry, for now at least. This has a potential bearing on the UK, where a number of same-sex and heterosexual couples are currently bringing claims against UK laws which permit civil partnerships for same-sex couples but prevents them from marrying.
29 November 2010
It has been widely reported that Learco Chindamo, who was convicted of killing headmaster Philip Lawrence in 1995, has been rearrested only months after being released from jail. The story has reopened a debate over the Human Rights Act, on the basis that it prevented Chindamo from being deported to his native Italy. But did it?
In fact, what the case really highlights is that the unpopularity of the Human Rights Act is in part due to inaccurate media reporting of human rights cases, even 10 years after it came into force.
The Telegraph reported at the end of last week that Frances Lawrence, Philip Lawrence’s widow, has urged the prime minister to act on his previous pledges to scrap the Human Rights Act, as
26 November 2010
HM (Iraq) v The secretary of state for the home department [2010] EWCA Civ 1322 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has overruled the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s decision to deport a 25-year-old Iraqi citizen who had lived in the UK since he was 12 and had recently been sent to prison for drug dealing, on the basis that it did not think carefully enough about his human rights to private and family life.
The decision – which is unusually concise and easy to follow – highlights the careful balancing exercise which an asylum and immigration tribunal must undertake in order to weigh up whether a person’s human rights to private and family life outweigh the public good of sending them back to their home country. In this case, although HM won his appeal, his case must now be reheard – for a third time – by an asylum tribunal.
24 November 2010
Updated | Juries are often being hindered by judges’ interventions, Lord Justice Moses has argued in the Annual Law Reform Lecture at Inner Temple.
In an illuminating and entertaining speech, he argued that many of the directions to juries are unhelpful and given in a “foreign tongue”, and that we should “no longer pretend that judges can assist a jury’s recollection by a recitation of the facts”.
24 November 2010
Updated | The House of Lords has voted against the Public Bodies Bill for a second time, making it more likely that the so-called Henry VIII powers buried within it will be revised.
The House defeated the bill by 235 votes to 201. The Bill, which has already attracted attention for seeking to abolish 192 quangos, was heavily criticised by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. The committee said that the powers given to ministers under the bill to change the statute book were too broad, and needed to be limited by procedural safeguards (see this post). It argued:
23 November 2010
Updated | Greens and M.T. v. the United Kingdom (application nos. 60041/08 & 60054/08) – Read judgment / press release (which the case summary below is based on)
The European Court of Human Rights is to give the UK a deadline of six months in order to allow prisoners to vote in elections, or it could face significant consequences.
The warning came by way of the judgment in a new case concerning the continued failure to amend the legislation imposing a blanket ban on voting in national and European elections for convicted prisoners in detention in the United Kingdom. The court, following its own five-year-old decision in Hirst No . 2, found a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (right to free elections) to the European Convention on Human Rights but no violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the Convention.
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