On 15^thJune 2018 the Canadian Supreme Court handed down two interesting and closely related judgments involving Trinity Western University: Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University and Brayden Volkenant2018 SCC 32 and Trinity Western University and Brayden Volkenant v Law Society of Upper Canada 2018 SCC 32

Trinity Western University (TWU) is a Christian University – indeed, in its own words, it is “a distinctly Christian university” (here, page 2). It takes “the Bible as the divinely inspired, authoritative guide for personal and community life” (here, page 1) and seeks“to develop godly Christian leaders”.

Prospective TWU students must sign a ‘Community Covenant’. That Covenant requires them to commit to “reserve sexual expressions of intimacy for marriage” and abstain from“sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman” (here, page 3). This rule applies both on and off campus(the Abstinence Rule, see paras [1] and [319]).

The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) refused to approve TWU’s faculty of Law because of the Abstinence Rule (I will call this the Decision). The question before the Supreme Court of Canada was whether this was lawful. The issue in Law Society of Upper Canada dealt with a similar decision of the Law Society of another province(Ontario)to approve the TWU law school.   Continue reading →

R (Parkinson) v. HM Senior Coroner for Kent and Others – read judgment

Continue reading →

Pimlico Plumbers Ltd & Anor v Smith [2018] UKSC 29 – read judgment

The Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed Pimlico Plumbers Ltd’s appeal and upheld the Employment Tribunal’s ruling that the Respondent – Mr Smith – a plumbing and heating engineer had been:

(a) a “worker” within the meaning of section 230(3) of the Employment Rights Act 1996;

(b) a “worker” within the meaning of regulation 2(1) of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/1833)

(c) in Pimlico’s “employment” within the meaning of section 83(2)(a) of the Equality Act.

Questions concerning the true employment status of individuals who are presented to the paying customer as being an integral part of the business in question are increasingly common. Despite being presented to the end customer as such, the purported legal reality is that the individual is self-employed for both tax and employment law purposes. This is partly what is described by such arrangements being part of the so-called “gig economy”. Continue reading →

R (on the application of Jollah) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1260 – read judgment

The Court of Appeal has upheld an award of damages for false imprisonment in the context of immigration detention.  The Court found that an unlawful curfew which required residence at a specific address between specific hours each day and which was backed by the threat of criminal sanctions and electronic tagging gave rise to the tort of false imprisonment.

Background law and facts

The claimant was released from prison in 2013 and then detained in an immigration centre.  He was then released on bail which came with restrictions on where he could live.  When the bail period ended, the secretary of state tried to maintain these residence restrictions.  She purported to use her powers under the Immigration Act 1971 Schedule 3 Paragraph 2(5) to impose a curfew on the claimant which required him to stay at his home address between 11pm and 7am every day.  The claimant was fitted with an electronic tag and told that he would face a fine or imprisonment if a court found that he did not comply with the terms of the curfew.  This curfew was in place for two and a half years, from February 2014 until July 2016. Continue reading →

In Episode 35 Matthew Hill discusses the lessons and warnings from the Bloody Sunday inquiry and the Hillsborough inquest in a talk recorded at One Crown Office Row’s 2018 seminar.

In Episode 36 , drawn from the same seminar, Emma-Louise Fenelon discusses the challenges around secrecy, anonymity and public information in major inquests and inquiries

In Episode 37  Gideon Barth considers when public inquiries are established or inquests reopened.

Law Pod UK is available for free download from iTunes, The Podcast App, Overcast, Audioboom and a number of other podcast platforms. Please rate and review us to help LawPodUK continue to grow. 

In the matter of an application by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2018] UKSC 27

On 7th June 2018, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in the case of regarding the controversial issue of the legal framework regulating abortion in Northern Ireland.

The judgment could not have come at a more heated moment in the debate between pro-choice and pro-life campaigners in Northern Ireland. Only two days earlier, MPs at Westminster debated potential decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland through repeal of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Considering the recent result in the Irish referendum on abortion, where the abortion ban was overturned by a clear majority, the issue of abortion is prominent in our political conversation.

In a lengthy judgment, the court dismissed the appeal by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), on the basis that, in the view of the 4-3 majority, it did not have standing to bring the proceedings.

Nevertheless, the justices went on to express the views that they would have come to in the event that the NIHRC had been found to have standing, with a differently constituted 4-3 majority considering that the general prohibition on abortion was incompatible with the right to private and family life under Article 8 ECHR.

The Background

The Offences Against the Persons Act and the Criminal Justice Act (NI 1945) criminalise abortion in Northern Ireland. In conjunction, these Acts (of the UK and Northern Irish legislatures respectively) imposes an obligation upon a pregnant woman that, unless there is a risk to her life or of serious long-term or permanent injury to her physical or mental health, she must carry the pregnancy to term.

These proceedings were brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (“NIHRC”) challenging the compatibility of the law in the following respect:

The prohibition of abortion in cases of

• Serious malformation of the foetus;
• Pregnancy as a result of rape; and/or
• Pregnancy as a result of incest

was argued to be incompatible with

• Article 3 (the prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment);
• Article 8 (the right of everyone to respect for their private and family life); and/or
• Article 14 (the prohibition of discrimination)

In the High Court, it was held that the law was incompatible with Article 8 insofar as it criminalised abortion in the the following circumscribed cases:

• Fatal foetal abnormality
• Rape up to the date when the foetus is capable of being born alive
• Incest up to the date when the foetus is capable of being born alive

The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, however, concluded that the general prohibition on abortion gave rise to no incompatibility with any of the articles of the ECHR.

The NIHRC appealed to the Supreme Court in London.

Continue reading →

In Episode 34 of Law Pod UK, Rosalind English talks to Professor Karen Yeung of Birmingham University about questions of civil liability of algorithm-run systems, the difficulties of regulating something we cannot truly predict, and the so-called “alignment problem” – how to align the utility function of intelligent machines with the values of the human race, which are very difficult to define.

Professor Yeung is Interdisciplinary Fellow in both the Law and Computer Science Schools at Birmingham, and recently gave evidence before the House of Lords Select Committee on AI. We posted on the report ‘AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?’ in April.

Law Pod UK is available for free download from iTunes, Overcast and Audioboom.