By: Guest Contributor
25 August 2016 by Guest Contributor
Photo credit: the Guardian
No, said the Supreme Court in McDonald v McDonald [2016] UKSC 28 – read judgment.
Facts
Fiona McDonald was a private sector tenant. The landlords were her parents who had purchased the property by obtaining a secured loan from a private company. They fell into arrears of the monthly payments, and the company sought possession pursuant to a s.21(4) Housing Act 1988 (‘HA 1988’) notice. The arrears were not substantial, but they had persisted for some time.
An Article 8 defence was raised as Fiona had mental health problems in the form of psychiatric and behavioural issues.
The Supreme Court rejected her defence for the following reasons.
No Article 8 assessment
The appellant argued that the court, as a public authority under s.6(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998 (‘HRA 1998’), was required to carry out an Article 8 assessment in such circumstances.
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22 August 2016 by Guest Contributor
By Pritesh Rathod
RT v (1) The First-Tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) and (2) Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [2016] UKUT 0306 (AAC) – read judgment.
The Upper Tribunal has ruled that, in deciding whether or not an applicant has cooperated with the prosecution of her assailant where she made and later retracted an allegation of rape, it was necessary to see why that retraction was made and whether it was done truly voluntarily, rather than simply assessing whether she was responsible for the retraction.
Background facts
The Applicant (“RT”) was married to H and had four children with him between 2001 and 2008. From 2004, she was subject to physical and mental abuse by H, culminating in three incidents of rape. What followed was a somewhat protracted and complicated course of events relating to H’s prosecution.
Initially, H was arrested and charged with six counts of rape. He was bailed subject to certain conditions. While H was in custody, RT wrote to him saying that she missed him and wanted him back home. Over Christmas 2009, H returned home and he and RT had “something of a reconciliation”, including having consensual sexual intercourse.
By January 2010, RT sought to withdraw the complaint (she had commenced divorce proceedings against him). In February 2010, RT telephoned the police to ask what would happen if she had lied about the rapes. Later that month, she retracted her allegations, saying that all of them were untrue. H appeared at the Crown Court and was acquitted after the prosecution offered no evidence.
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4 July 2016 by Guest Contributor
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Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is the red button for the nuclear option of withdrawal from the EU, and in its design, it was never really, truly envisioned to be pressed. Without testing, and without precedent, we are left with no idea of the potential fallout of pressing that red button. Compared to the quasi-constitutionism of Article 2 TEU evoking the values ‘common to the Member States’ of ‘pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between men and women’; or the brutal legalism of Title VII of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) on competition, tax and the approximation of laws; Article 50 TEU is anaemic. It is, essentially, a button triggering a countdown clock, which is on a comparable level of advancement to the 1980s floppy disk.
The two-year countdown
Triggering Article 50 TEU will begin a two-year countdown to the end of UK Membership of the Union. Within that two-year period an agreement determining the withdrawal arrangements and the future relationship with the Union must be made. Barring a unanimous decision to extend the period, at the end of two years from the point of notification, the UK will no longer be a Member. The Treaties, and all rights and duties therein, cease to apply.
But now, as the British political establishment play a game of “pass the red button”, we are faced with some confounding, and concerning questions from a rights’ perspective. Likely to be lost in the two-year scramble for a political and trade agreement between the UK and EU, which will attempt at all costs to avoid the fall-back position of the application of WTO trade rules, are the very rights and values held as common between the (ex-)Member State(s). During that two-year period, EU law and (pertinently) EU rights will continue to apply in the UK. Free movement will still be (from a legal perspective) free, and claimants may still rely on their EU rights in the Courts. But then what? What happens when the clock strikes zero?
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2 July 2016 by Guest Contributor
Owain Thomas QC reviews this new book by 1 Crown Office Row’s own Sally Smith QC.
Sally Smith’s wonderful new biography of the great Edwardian advocate Edward Marshall Hall is the first reappraisal of his life and career since the celebrated biography by Marjoribanks, published only two years after his death. Since then the worlds of law, journalism, celebrity, and crime have become intertwined in so many complex ways, but Smith charts in this book the quite remarkable public life of the era’s most sought after barrister. He attained celebrity beyond the dreams of even the most fervent publicity hungry barrister. His cases were regularly front page news. Because of the deliciously lurid subject matter some might have got there anyway, but his name added a lustre and whetted the public appetite for the scandal to come with the promise of a coup de théâtre. Thousands waited for the verdicts outside the Old Bailey.
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26 June 2016 by Guest Contributor
We’re quiet at the UKHRB, but working on it. In the meantime, here is a level headed prognostication of where the EU arbiter – no longer head arbiter for us, but for the time being – will need to go.
Thank you Eutopia law for permission to repost this instructive article by Professor Peter Lindseth.
“What if…?” These kinds of questions may now seem pointless in the aftermath of the victory of Leave in the EU Referendum. Instead we hear ‘What’s done is done’, ‘Leave means Leave’, ‘out is out’, etc., etc., etc.
But one question has always nagged at me ever since David Cameron brought his renegotiation deal back to the UK in February: What if it included a serious commitment to alter the role and doctrines of the European Court of Justice? Would that have tipped the balance toward the Remain side? Would we have been talking instead about a 52-48 victory for Remain? Would serious ECJ reform, both institutionally and doctrinally, have been enough to peel off the likes of Boris Johnson from the Leave camp, harnessing his energies for Remain and reform?
We will never know. But the question is still of interest, if for no other reason than the remaining Member States must now seriously consider a range of EU reforms in order to prevent further contagion of the Brexit virus. As former German Constitutional Court Judge Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff said in an interview on Verfassungsblog,
the shock over what has happened, and the fear of further disintegration, might produce an awakening effect. So I try to remain optimistic.
This post is in that spirit.
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13 June 2016 by Guest Contributor
Last year 32,446 people subject to immigration control in the UK were detained by the government. Some had entered the country irregularly and were quickly removed. Others were detained pending removal or deportation. More than half of them were released back into the community, meaning that their detention had served no purpose.
But what many people don’t know is that many of those detained were ordinary people, many of whom had lived in the UK for decades and, until they were detained had been quietly going about their everyday lives with their partners and children. Some have never known any other home, and have husbands and wives, sons and daughters, jobs, homes, lives right here in Britain. Decisions to detain pay no heed to the impact of such a decision on the wider family. Parents are removed without warning from the heart of the family.
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8 June 2016 by Guest Contributor
1 Crown Office Row and Hart Publishing are delighted to announce the publication of
‘The Inquest Book: The Law of Coroners and Inquests’ edited by Caroline Cross and Neil Garnham
with contributions from barristers at 1 Crown Office Row
We are delighted to offer readers of the UKHRB a 20% discount on the book! Please see below for details of how to order with your discount
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12 May 2016 by Guest Contributor
John Wadham today takes on the role of National Preventative Mechanism chair. He was formally Chief Legal Officer for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Deputy Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and most recently the Director of the international human rights organisation, Interights. Throughout his career, John has worked to protect the rights of detainees.
We are delighted to feature this from John on his new role:
The National Preventive Mechanism describes the network of independent statutory bodies that have responsibility for preventing ill-treatment in detention. In every jurisdiction of the UK – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – the bodies in this network have the job of inspecting or monitoring every place of detention to try to prevent the ill-treatment of those detained. Whether a person is compulsorily detained in a prison, an immigration removal centre, a psychiatric hospital, or as a child in a Secure Training Centre, there is an organisation responsible for assessing how detainees are treated and ensuring that no ill-treatment will be tolerated.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) is the international human rights treaty designed to strengthen the protection of people deprived of their liberty by requiring National Preventive Mechanisms to be set up in every country. OPCAT’s adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 2002 demonstrated a consensus among the international community that people deprived of their liberty are particularly vulnerable to ill-treatment and that efforts to combat such ill-treatment should focus on primarily on prevention. OPCAT embodies the idea that prevention of ill-treatment in detention can best be achieved by a system of independent, regular visits to all places of detention. OPCAT entered into force in June 2006. There are already 80 countries party to OPCAT, and 62 designated NPMs across the world – all designed to prevent ill-treatment in their places of detention. The UK ratified OPCAT in December 2003 and designated its own NPM in March 2009.
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6 May 2016 by Guest Contributor
Photo credit: Guardian
By Marina Wheeler QC
In a speech about Brexit last week, the Home Secretary shared what she called her “hard-headed analysis”: membership of an unreformed EU makes us safer, but – beware the non-sequitur – we must withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which does not.
It is surely time for some clearer Government thinking about these questions. If politicians could put politics to one side, they might recognise that the Convention and the Strasbourg court are not enemies of our sovereignty, but there are aspects of EU law as applied by the Court of Justice in Luxembourg which are.
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27 April 2016 by Guest Contributor
Aranyosi and Căldăraru [C-404/15 and C-659/15 PPU].
On 5 April 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the execution of a European Arrest Warrant (‘EAW’) must be deferred if there is a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment because of the conditions of detention for the person concerned in the requesting state. If the existence of that risk cannot be discounted within a reasonable period, the authority responsible for the execution of the warrant must decide whether the surrender procedure should be deferred or brought to an end.
The cases concerned two totally unrelated and separate extradition requests: a Hungarian accusation warrant seeking the person for trial, the other a Romanian conviction warrant so the person sought could serve a prison sentence. The requested state in both cases was Germany.
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24 March 2016 by Guest Contributor
“Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Whatever your political colour;
Human rights should matter to you”
Some legal oratory flows into the profound, beautiful and inspiring. Most of the time when it comes to poetry – as this particularly appalling ditty is designed to demonstrate – we lawyers should stick to the day job.*
This week human rights commentators celebrated both World Poetry Day and the launch of a new project on the conservative commitment to human rights. Announcing a Commission made up of MPs and commentators – including Maria Miller MP, Dominic Grieve QC MP and Matthew D’Ancona – Bright Blue this week published a series of essays by Conservative leaders on a range of human rights threats; from the refugee crisis to the repeal of the Human Rights Act.
Bright Blue now joins the Labour Campaign for Human Rights in taking steps to take the current debate beyond the heat and light of party politics and into a greater conversation about how we protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our communities and about the UK’s place in the world.
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8 March 2016 by Guest Contributor
The JUSTICE Student Conference 2016 is on 19 March 2016, at the University of Law in London. The full programme is available here and you can book online here.
Spend a Saturday talking human rights and the Human Rights Act with Dominic Grieve QC, Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, and the JUSTICE team.
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25 February 2016 by Guest Contributor
Ben Smith, Legal Research Intern at the Equal Rights Trust
I expected competition for jobs in human rights to be tough but it was only when I graduated that I realised quite how difficult it was to break into the sector. I had gained a lot academically – I had an undergraduate degree in Law from Oxford University and a Master of Laws from University College London – but this didn’t seem to be enough when applying for jobs with human rights NGOs. I tried to stay positive and kept putting in applications but the feedback I got again and again was that while I was well qualified, there was always someone with more experience. Though I had lots of pro bono experience and legal experience in other sectors, the organisations I was applying to wanted direct experience in the field.
The only options I saw to gain that experience were internships, which were generally unpaid. It was frustrating to devote so much time academically to human rights only to find that a career is out of reach unless you have the financial means to work in unpaid lengthy internships. Like many other graduates, and particularly as I didn’t have roots in London, this wasn’t an option for me.
In August 2015 I saw the position advertised for Legal Research Interns with the Equal Rights Trust which offered a needs-based grant for applicants. The Trust is an international organisation which focuses on advancing equality and non-discrimination worldwide – an area I had looked at extensively during my studies and a keen interest of mine. I jumped at the chance to apply as the internship seemed like the perfect next step – and one that was accessible to me. I was offered the post in August, after which I submitted an application for the grant (which was accepted) and I started working with the Trust in September.
What sets this internship apart from others is that the tasks I’ve carried out have been incredibly varied and I’ve had the opportunity to work across the full range of work the Trust does, including advocacy, litigation and fundraising. I’ve lost track of the number of countries I’ve been involved with, I think it must be over 20 already, which is testament to the breadth of work the Trust does. It has been an incredible chance to broaden my horizons and expand my knowledge of equality and non-discrimination law.
I’ve had the opportunity to take on genuine responsibility in my position and develop important skills – you’re not just making tea and doing photocopying, but carrying out work that has a real impact. Recently, I researched and prepared a first draft of the Trust’s submissions in a case we are intervening in before the European Court of Human Rights. This was a huge task and it was a privilege to be trusted with it.
I think the level of responsibility we are given is due in part to the Trust’s paid internship scheme – a lot of NGOs are keen to take on interns who will work for free but who aren’t always best placed to take on a high level of responsibility or work on technical outputs. This can also be problematic as interns will often leave before their placement ends. In this sense I think the scheme is a “win-win” for the Trust and for the interns.
It will be sad to leave the Trust in spring as my internship comes to an end, but I know that if my legal career takes me away from human rights work, I will be able to put the skills I’ve developed as an intern to good use.
On 23 February the Trust launched a campaign – the Bob Hepple Memorial Fund – to help others like me who would be struggling to enter the sector were it not for paid internship and fellowship placements. Through the campaign the Trust has set itself a minimum target to raise of £1,000 which could support a needs based grant for an intern for approximately six weeks. If it meets its desired target of £10,000 it could support four interns and a fellow for three months.
I’ve learned an enormous amount as an intern and it has given me a real career boost, so I hope the campaign is not only a great success but that it will be replicated elsewhere in the sector to help more people pursue their ambition.
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18 February 2016 by Guest Contributor
WF, Petitioner [2016] CSOH 27 – read judgment
The Outer House of the Court of Session has ruled that the right to privacy and medical confidentiality under Article 8 of the Convention entitles complainers to be heard and have legal representation before any orders are made for recovery of their medical records.
Factual circumstances and legal background
The petitioner, (‘WF’) was a complainer in domestic abuse proceedings against the accused. The accused sought to recover all medical, psychiatric and psychological records relating to WF from 2007 to 2014. WF sought legal aid to allow her to be represented at the hearing concerning the recovery of these documents, arguing that her rights under Article 8 of the Convention entitled her to participate. The application to the Scottish Legal Aid Board was refused as there was no provision in the relevant legislation or regulations for legal aid to be granted for such proceedings. A further application was then made to the Scottish Ministers, under s.4(2)(c) of the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986, which allows legal aid to be granted in circumstances not covered by the rules. This application was also refused on the grounds that WF did not have the right to appear or be represented at the relevant hearing. The key issue which came before the Sheriff was therefore whether Article 8 gave the complainer the right to appear and be represented at the hearing concerning disclosure of her medical records.
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18 February 2016 by Guest Contributor
Adam Wagner and Diarmuid Laffan acted for the appellant Ameen Jogee in this case
Today the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the conjoined appeals of R v Jogee and Ruddock v R [2016] UKSC 8, having heard the latter sitting as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Both cases were appeals against murder convictions founded on a discrete principle of secondary liability, sometimes referred to as ‘joint enterprise’, sometimes as ‘parasitic accessorial liability’ (‘PAL’). The Supreme Court’s judgment:
- Conducts a comprehensive review of the principles applicable to secondary liability for crime, and murder in particular [4]-[60];
- Analyses the leading Privy Council and House of Lords authorities on PAL [61]-[87]; and hence
- Overturns them, restating the law in the area [88]-[99].
PAL originated in the Privy Council’s judgment Chan Wing-Siu v R [1985] AC 168, and was approved by the House of Lords in R v Powell; R v English [1999] 1 AC 1. Those authorities were cited over 25 times at the highest level before today’s judgment, and abundantly in the Court of Appeal where appeals against convictions based on PAL have been a regular fixture. The PAL principle states that where someone (D2) jointly participates with another (D1) in committing Crime A, and in doing so foresees a possibility that D1 might commit Crime B, D2 can be tried jointly as principal for Crime B if D1 goes on to commit it.
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