By: Graeme Hall
31 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. Happy post Bank Holiday reading!
by Graeme Hall
In the news:
Whilst the Neuberger Committee’s report is arguably the best place to kick-off any discussion on privacy, freedom of expression and Super-Injunctions, it is not, as Inforrm’s blog concludes, the “last word” on the matter. Indeed, this “overinflated topic” has been tackled with such gusto by the press and blogosphere that the High Court clearly gave a yellow card for “widespread disobedience“.
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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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18 April 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:
Prisoner voting remains in the headlines and given that the European Court of Human Rights has refused the UK government’s request to reconsider Greens and MT v UK, it’s not going to stray far. Benn Quinn, writing in the Guardian, notes that the UK is one of very few signatories to the Convention on Human Rights which has a blanket ban; a point picked up by Adam Wagner in his recent post.
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4 April 2011 by Graeme Hall
In an interesting post, Aidan O’Neill QC concludes that the European Court of Human Rights is “in danger of imminent collapse” due to its backlog of 140,000 applications with around 1,600 arriving every month; a conclusion compounded by inherent delays. He suggests that the way to draw back Strasbourg from the brink of judicial Armageddon is to abolish the individual right to petition Strasbourg and to introduce a referral system whereby national courts request Strasbourg’s opinion on human rights issues, akin to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
by Graeme Hall
I must disagree. Strasbourg’s jurisdiction spreads across 47 contracting States, ranging from diverse populations such as Liechtenstein and Malta to Russia and Turkey. In turn, the Court is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights for over 800,000,000 individuals. The 61,300 valid applications which Strasbourg received in 2010 represent applications from 0.0077 per cent of the population to which the Convention applies. Given the importance of the Convention to the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms, I find it surprising that Strasbourg does not receive more applications.
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29 March 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:
James Wilson, writing in the Halsbury’s Law Exchange blog, examines Lord Neuberger’s discussion relating to the form and content of legal judgments, delivered in the 2011 Judicial Studies Board Lecture “Open Justice Unbound“. Whilst agreeing with many of the points Lord Neuberger made, Wilson highlights the difficulties in making judgments comprehensible to members of the public. Click here to see Adam Wagner’s post on ‘open justice’ and the accessibility of the law, a theme which is developed by Lucy Series in The Small Places blog.
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22 March 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
As the UK government is requesting the referral of Greens and M.T. v UK to the Grand Chamber, with the intention that the European Court of Human Rights reconsiders the issue of prisoner voting, the Committee of Ministers, vested with the responsibility to oversee the enforcement of the Court’s judgments, has put on hold its ongoing review of the UK’s compliance with the decision in Hirst v UK (No. 2). This comes at a time when a senior human rights academic, as well as other states (according to the PoliticsHome blog), are also questioning the Court’s legitimacy. The background to these controversial decisions can be found in Adam Wagner’s post.
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7 March 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:
Although prisoner voting appears to have taken a back seat this week, the Daily Mail has reported that the UK government has asked the European Court of Human Rights to refer the decision of Greens and MT v UK to the Grand Chamber. This judgment gave compensation to two prisoners because the UK had failed to implement the court’s decision in Hirst v UK (No. 2). According to the article, the government wants to refer this decision to the court’s appeal chamber because the issue of prisoner voting rights has now been debated in Parliament. See our previous post on Greens and MT v UK, as well as our most recent summary of the ongoing prisoner voting issue. A BBC programme about the Strasbourg court can be accessed via the ECHR blog.
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15 February 2011 by Graeme Hall
Today we are reinvigorating our weekly human rights news and case law roundup. Look out for regular bulletins of all the law we haven’t quite managed to feature in full blog posts.
by Graeme Hall
Bringing Rights Back Home, with foreword by Lord Hoffmann – Policy Exchange: A report by political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, commissioned by the thinktank Policy Exchange, offers a strong academic criticism of the European Court of Human Rights’ current composition and powers, as well as the affects its judgments are having in Britain. Click here for our previous commentary on the report.
Ben Emmerson: The European Court of Human Rights enhances our democracy – The Independent: In a detailed article, Ben Emmerson QC examines the thinktank Exchange Policy’s recently published report ‘Bringing Rights Back Home’, which criticised the current practises of the European Court of Human Rights. In particular, the barrister pays attention to the comments of Lord Hoffman (a former law Lord) who authored the report’s foreward. See our previous post for a commentary on the report.
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