Category: In the news
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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29 March 2011 by Guest Contributor
The relationship between the expression of religious beliefs and practice and equality law is a fraught one, and particular difficulty has been experienced in the matter of the application of the law outlawing discrimination.
Equality law, as currently interpreted, treats the six prohibited grounds of discrimination – age, disability, race, religion, sex (including transgender status) and sexual orientation – as being of equal weight and standing; there is no hierarchy among these grounds.
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28 March 2011 by Guest Contributor
The coalition Government has appointed an independent Commission to investigate the case for a UK Bill of Rights. This Commission has also been tasked with providing advice to the Government on the possible reform of the European Court of Human Rights – as part of on the ongoing Interlaken process – ahead of and following the UK’s coming Chairmanship of the Council of Europe.
One does not have to be human rights sceptic to accept that there is an unequivocal case for further reform of the Strasbourg Court because, unless something is done, the current system for human rights protection at a European level is in danger of imminent collapse.
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25 March 2011 by Rosalind English
The case of Patmainiece v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was reported in an earlier post. Here we discuss the underlying rationale for the decision and ask whether the finding that the nationality requirement amounted to mere indirect discrimination was a correct “fit” with EU principles of free movement.
Article 18 (now article 21 TFEU) provides:
1. Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States
However a different regime applies to non-economic actors as opposed to workers. Free movement of workers is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the internal market on which the EU is based. The main EU Directives and Regulations giving effect to the right to free movement of workers are Regulation No 1612/68 on freedom of movement for workers within the Community (as amended by Directive 2004/38/EC) and Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of EU citizens and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states. But the rights of those who are economically inactive to reside for more than three months in other member states is subject to certain conditions, set out in the 2004 Directive; they must
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24 March 2011 by Guest Contributor
The recent claim in Parliament by Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming (pictured right) that Sir Fred Goodwin has obtained an injunction to prevent him being identified as a banker has reignited interest in the suggestion that the media can in some way sidestep the secrecy of an injunction through the indirect use of Parliamentary privilege. The incident is reminiscent of Paul Farelly’s revelation to Parliament that Trafigura had obtained a so-called “super-injunction” against the Guardian in October 2009.
In his blog on the Guardian website, Roy Greenslade asks: “Have MPs, and the media, found a way to overcome super-injunctions?” This question is worth considering from a legal perspective. This post will attempt to answer it by focussing on two areas: (i) the ability of MPs to disclose confidential information in Parliament and (ii) the ability of the media to report on these disclosures in order to evade liability for contempt of court.
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22 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
As the Cearta.ie blog reminds us this morning, the late Lord Bingham saw accessibility, intelligibility and predictability as central requirements for the effective rule of law. It is also central to the human right to a fair trial. On that theme, Lord Neuberger, the head of the court of appeal, gave a speech last week which sought to push that agenda forward in the internet age.
But what comes next? In order to push forward the open justice agenda, ideas will have to be practically worked through, and funded. Please use the comments section of this post to let us know what you think, what you make of the ideas in Neuberger’s speech and whether you have any ones of your own.
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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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21 March 2011 by Guest Contributor
The European Convention
On 8 March 1951, sixty years ago this month, the UK ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Two things are often said about what was expected of the Convention back in 1951.
First, it was only ever intended to establish a system that would protect against the types of severe human rights violations witnessed during the War. Consequently (and secondly), the Convention system was never intended to become what it has today, its Court now sometimes acting like a type of Supreme Court for Europe in the field of human rights.
Both points are relevant to current day debates about the legitimate role of the Strasbourg Court. To what extent then are they accurate?
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21 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The housing minister Grant Shapps wrote in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph that he wants to make squatting a criminal offence and “shut the door to squatters once and for all”
The changes to the law are being investigated by the Ministry of Justice at the moment (update: read the government’s press release and new guidance here). They will be of interest from a human rights perspective, although aspects of the UK’s current approach to squatters rights were declared compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights by the grand chamber European Court of Human Rights in the 2007 case of JA Pye (Ocford) LTD v. United Kingdom.
What is interesting about the proposed clarifications and changes to the law is the way in which they were reported.
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20 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | It all started with the reporting of an injunction, supposedly obtained by former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive, “preventing him being identified as a banker”. A mildly interesting story, made marginally more so by the fact that the injunction had been breached by an MP during a Parliamentary debate.
But there is more to the story. As bloggers Anna Raccoon, Charon QC and Obiter J have reported, on a Parliamentary debate on Thursday the same Liberal Democrat MP, John Hemming, revealed the details of a number of other (what he called) “hyper” injunctions. The common feature was that courts had ordered not only that the parties to litigation were to be prevented from revealing details of their cases to the public, but also to their MPs.
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18 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
The much trumpeted commission on a UK Bill of Rights has been launched by the Ministry of Justice. It is pretty much as was leaked last week, although it will now have 8 rather than 6 experts chaired by Sir Leigh Lewis, a former Permanent Secretary to the Department of Work and Pensions.
The commission is to report by the end of 2012. Its members, described as “human rights experts”. Are they? The roll call, made up mostly of barristers, is:
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17 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
One of the country’s most senior judges, Lord Neuberger, has given a stirring speech on the challenges of open justice in the 21st century. His ideas are progressive and practical, and amount to a manifesto for building a more open justice system, fit for the internet age.
The annual Judicial Studies Board lecture has in recent years been used by the senior judiciary to criticise the European Court of Human Rights (see Lord Judge’s and Lord Hoffmann’s 2010 and 2009 speeches), so Neuberger’s Open Justice Unbound represents a refreshing change of pace.
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16 March 2011 by Rosalind English
The government’s proposals for reform of the law on defamation have been published. The bill seeks to address concerns that libel law has a chilling effect on freedom of speech, failing to strike the right balance between free speech and protection of reputation.
The pressure of the widely-supported reform campaign, inspired by recent libel actions stifling comment on issues of scientific and academic debate, has no doubt contributed to the manifesto commitment on the part of all three parties which the coalition is now following through. The consultation paper and draft bill has been met with muted enthusiasm, with critics claiming that the proposed statute at best codifies the common law, with all its confusions and complexities, and that the whole is at worst “too little, too late” to meet their reform demands.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
As well as blaming bloggers for media frenzies in yesterday’s Law in Action interview, the Attorney General also made some interesting comments on the UK’s bold new tactic on prisoner votes (see my post on Monday), which is effectively to try to appeal an unappealable ruling.
He said (from 19:20) that the UK “takes its responsibility seriously” and that it would be seeking to reform the court when it takes on the chairmanship later this year. “In any political process” he reminded Rozenberg, “the movement of the tectonic plates is always going to be a bit rough” (please note that the programme was recorded before the Japanese earthquakes). He would not say, however, whether the government would do anything to comply with the ruling in Hirst No. 2.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Attorney General has warned publishers that the law may be changed to prevent them revealing the names of criminal suspects before they are charged. He also blamed the “massive” and “frenzied”coverage of pre-charge suspects in part on pressure on newspapers from the blogosphere.
Dominic Grieve told Joshua Rozenberg on yesterday’s Law in Action (listen here):
We seem to be living a world where because of competing interests on newspapers, perhaps in part because of the internet, because of the fact they are competing with the blogosphere where people are publishing a great deal of material, national newspapers are keen to give as much background detail to their readers as possible at early stages of criminal investigations. (09:25)
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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.
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