Monthly News Archives: May 2011
11 May 2011 by Maria Roche
The Department of Education today published the final report of Professor Eileen Munro into the child protection system in England. After extensive consultation, the report concludes that the social work profession needs to be freed from a compliance culture and stifling levels of central prescription in order to allow social workers to have more time to work with families and to restore the heart of the work.
Professor Munro was asked in June 2010 by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove MP, to conduct an independent review to improve child protection. The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children & Families (Tim Loughton MP) stated that the fundamental review should pose the question:
What will help professionals to make the best judgments they can to protect vulnerable people?
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10 May 2011 by Rosalind English
The Strasbourg Court has ruled that the United Kingdom has not breached the right to privacy by failing to have in place a “pre-notification” requirement that would have alerted Max Mosley to the News of the World’s impending publication of covertly filmed footage – read judgment.
Adam Wagner’s prediction is bang to rights; although in this particular case the Court agreed that the newspaper had “flagrantly” violated Max Mosley’s right to privacy, it has refrained from ruling that UK law fell short of adequate protection of Article 8. “Particular care” had to be taken when examining constraints which might operate as a form of censorship prior to publication and generally have a chilling effect on journalism.
A new attitude of diffidence characterises this judgment in that the Court expressly refrains from considering the application of Convention rights to the facts of this case, since the UK Court had already decided on it. This suggests that Strasbourg is beginning to take on board criticisms that it is tending to arrogate to itself the role of supra-national court of appeal. There was no reconsideration therefore of the High Court’s assessment of the newspaper’s public interest defence nor of the balancing act that the judge had conducted between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression. The focus of this ruling was on the question of whether a legally binding pre-notification rule was required.
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10 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | If you are looking for something to do whilst waiting for the Mosley privacy judgment from the European Court of Human Rights (scheduled for 9am UK time), and are still finding the super-injunction supernova confusing (who isn’t?), I recommend reading some of the excellent coverage from the legal blogs:
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9 May 2011 by Graeme Hall
It’s time for the human rights roundup, a regular bulletin of all the law we haven’t quite managed to feature in full blog posts. The full list of links, updated each day, can be found here.
by Graeme Hall
In the news
At the top of the worldwide news agenda is the killing of Osama Bin Laden. In addition to concern over the implications his death will have on the fight against Islamic fundamentalism (click here for some of Adam Wagner’s reflections), the manner in which Bin Laden died has undoubtedly split opinion. Geoffrey Robinson QC strongly condemned the killing when writing in The Independent on Sunday. This is to be contrasted with the assistant editor of the Guardian, Michael White’s opinion, as well as more starkly opposed opinions on the lawfulness of the shooting, an example of which can be found on the Blog of the European Journal of International Law.
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9 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
A near-hysterical reaction has greeted some recent European court rulings. If you believed the coverage, you would think that unelected, underqualified and frankly bonkers judges are dictating our laws and making our Prime Minister physically ill.
With this week potentially heralding another hang-the-judges media storm over Max Mosley’s Strasbourg privacy case, it is a relief to read three sensible and balanced pieces on European courts this week, all of which highlights the courts’ shortcomings, but also the risks of a UK withdrawal.
First up is Charlemagne, the European columnist in The Economist, who finds a European court system which is “bewildering” – rightly wondering what the difference is between the European Council and the Council of Europe – and staffed by judges who “annoy most national politicians some of the time and infuriate some most of the time“.
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9 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
A team of 1 Crown Office Row barristers and staff are taking part in the 10KM London Legal Walk next week. You can sponsor the team by clicking here.
We are raising money for the London Legal Support Trust, which funds Law Centres and pro bono agencies in and around London including the invaluable Bar pro Bono Unit and Free Representation Unit.
The UK Human Rights Blog was launched just over a year ago. It is a free service and we intend it to remain so, in order to give the general public easy access to expert human rights commentary. We do not support campaigns as a matter of policy, but we do ask that if you use and enjoy the blog, and you consider access to justice to be important, that you sponsor us in next week’s walk.
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6 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
Lady Justice Hallett, Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner West London, is giving her findings in the combined inquests into the deaths resulting from the “7/7” London bombings on the 7 July 2005 which killed 52 and injured over 700.
Unsurprisingly, the coroner has found that the 52 people who died as a result of the bombings were unlawfully killed. She also found that they would have died “whatever time the emergency services reached and rescued them”. The coroner made 9 recommendations (using her power under Rule 43 of the Coroners Rules) for the future prevention of such events, which are reproduced in full below.
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6 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
L (A Child: Media Reporting), Re [2011] EWHC B8 (Fam) (18 April 2011) – Read judgment
The thought of being personally criticised in a reported judgment would make most lawyers break into a cold sweat. Some journalists wear such treatment as a badge of honour. But surely it is professionally embarrassing for a high court judge to label an article as “unbalanced, inaccurate and just plain wrong“.
That was the treatment handed out by His Honour Judge Bellamy to the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker in a recent ruling. The facts of the case are sad and I will not repeat them in any detail. HHJ Bellamy was asked to make a factual ruling relating to the alleged mistreatment of a baby by its family. He found that the mother was responsible for breaking the baby’s arm, an injury which led to the council forcibly removing the child from its parents’ care, as well as bruising to his hand and cheek. The judge did question, however, why it was necessary for the police to march the parents through a hospital wearing handcuffs.
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4 May 2011 by Guest Contributor
This is Part 3 of a three-part series which originally appeared on Inforrm’s Blog. Part 1 can be read here and Part 2 here.
There are at least four possible “ways forward” for the new law of privacy which has been developed by the courts over the past decade and which has, at least from the point of view of sections of the media, been very controversial. These four possibilities are as follows:
(1) Active steps could be taken to abolish the law of privacy and return to the pre-Human Rights Act position.
(2) The current “judge made” law of privacy could be replaced by a new “statutory tort” of invasion of privacy.
(3) A special “privacy regime” for the media could be established under a statutory regulator.
(4) “Steady as she goes” – the law of privacy could be left to develop in the current way – by the judges on the basis of the Article 8 and Article 10 case law.
Each of these possibilities gives rise to different issues and potential difficulties.
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3 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
Update – apologies for the earlier confusion. The details below are correct and confirmed.
The second #lawblogs event will be held on 19 May 2011 at 6pm. The Law Society at 113 Chancery Lane have kindly agreed to host the event.
To reserve your place, send an email to lawblogsevent@gmail.com with the subject heading “Legal blogging event” and your full name only in the text. Only one place can be reserved per person. Space is limited so please email as soon as possible if you want to attend. You can also follow updates and live tweets from the event on Twitter via our new account at @legalblogging.
Like the “Future of Legal Blogging“, but on a larger scale, the event will be a panel based discussion of the past, present and future of legal blogging, tweeting and journalism, followed of course by drinks and nibbles. The speakers will be:
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3 May 2011 by Melina Padron
It’s time for the human rights roundup, a regular bulletin of all the law we haven’t quite managed to feature in full blog posts. The full list of links, updated each day, can be found here.
by Melinda Padron
In the news
It can safely be said that the topic of “super injunctions” has received a lot of media coverage, perhaps second only to the royal wedding.
Firstly the outrage seen in tabloid newspapers and news broadcasts alike was caused by the two injunctions which gagged the media from reporting on the extra marital affairs of an actor and of a footballer. Then adding to the controversy was the decision of the former “gagger” Andrew Marr to break the terms of his own injunction and reveal himself as being responsible from preventing the reporting of his own extra marital affair.
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3 May 2011 by Rosalind English
In a modern liberal democracy we take for granted the fact that laws apply to all individuals and are enforced by the courts without special consideration of religious beliefs they may happen to have.
But for a while at least there was a very real danger of the dissolution of the divide between private orthodoxy and public principle following the widespread invocation of Article 9 in the courts. This came to a head in the furore over the former Archbishop of Canterbury’s intervention in the MacFarlane v Relate case, provoking some very sharp words from Lord Justice Laws. Although religious groups continue to rattle their sabres, a recent ruling from the Charity Tribunal suggests that the right to religion is losing its edge somewhat on the litigious battlefield. Does this mark a trend away from making concessions to the devout?
We posted previously on the somewhat convoluted history of Catholic Care v Charity Commission for England and Wales. Essentially the Charity wished to legitimise its policy of excluding same sex couples from its adoption services by seeking permission from the Charity Commission to amend its objects of association. They sought thereby to a statutory exception to the general prohibition on discrimination in the Equality Act 2010.
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3 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
The New York Times reports that after years of promising leads gone cold, the final piece of evidence which led to Osama Bin Laden was found by interrogating detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Given the rough interrogation techniques which were in use at the prison camp, the killing has reopened the debate over torture, and whether it is ever justified.
Blogger David Allen Green, amongst others, asks whether the Bin Laden scenario may amount to an exception to the “otherwise absolute rule” that torture is wrong. I would like to pose a slightly different question: on the basis of current UK law, would it have been lawful for UK authorities to use information obtained under torture to capture or kill a known terrorist?
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2 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
I argued last summer that rights campaigners were approaching the end of the age of terrorism, with economic concerns taking centre stage. The death of Bin Laden, just under a decade since the September 11 terrorist attacks, may ultimately be a historical marker of that shift in focus.
It is coincidental that Bin Laden’s death was announced on the British May Day bank holiday, traditionally a period of economic protests and celebration of the labour movement. But that coincidence does serve to highlight two different aspects of universal rights protections: to put it crudely, the protection of people we do and people we don’t like.
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2 May 2011 by Guest Contributor
This is Part 2 of a three part series which originally appeared on Inforrm’s Blog. Part 1 can be read here and Part 3 is coming tomorrow.
The “new law of privacy” has not been uncontroversial. Over the past week the press has complained bitterly about “gagging orders” and “judge made law”. These criticisms are not new. More than four years ago, with characteristic restraint, the commentator Melanie Phillips described the process of the development of privacy law in these terms:
“Driven by a deep loathing of the popular press, the judges have long been itching to bring in a privacy law by the back door. Thus free speech is to be made conditional on the prejudices of the judiciary …” (Melanie Phillips, “The law of human wrongs”, Daily Mail, 6 December 2006)
Her editor at the Mail, Paul Dacre, has been equally firm in his views:
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