Category: In the news
13 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
The Home Secretary has said that the government will not appeal the High Court’s decision to uphold that there were to be no ‘closed’ hearings at the 7/7 inquests.
As we posted earlier this month, The High Court, composed of two colleagues of the Coroner (Dame Heather Hallett) in the Court of Appeal, robustly rejected the Home Secretary’s application for a review of the decision. In short, both judges concurred with Hallett LJ’s decision that the Coroners Rules did not provide a power to hear evidence in sessions from which ‘interested persons’ (including families of the 7/7 victims) could be excluded.
Richard Mumford’s analysis of the High Court decision is here, and his previous post on Lady Justice Hallett’s decision is here.
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10 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
The European Court of Human Rights has updated its very useful factsheet service (see previous post) with 10 news ones, to celebrate Human Rights Day, which is today.
The 10 new factsheets summarise the court’s case law in relation to various areas: Children rights, Collective expulsions, Conscientious objection, Transsexuals rights (translation in progress), Protection of journalistic sources, Racial discrimination, Right to one’s own image, Social welfare, Trade union rights, and Violence against Women.
The court is to be commended for its efforts to increase understanding of its new judgments, via excellent press releases, and its voluminous case-law, via these factsheets. Get them whilst they are up to date! The rest of the list is:
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10 December 2010 by Guest Contributor
Last night was the Justice Human Rights Awards 2010 ceremony. Readers of this blog will know that we were one of three organisations shortlisted for the Human Rights Awards.
We didn’t win! But we did lose out to an excellent organisation: Bail for Immigration Detainees, an independent charity which challenges immigration detention in the UK, working with asylum seekers and migrants in removal centres and prisons to secure their release from detention.
The Human Rights Awards have been held each December since 2001 to commemorate Human Rights Day, which is today.
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9 December 2010 by Rosalind English
The Child Poverty Action Group (Respondent) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions(Appellant) [2010] UKSC 54 – Read judgment / press release
The Supreme Court has ruled that where benefits are overpaid as a result of a mistaken calculation, the department responsible cannot claim these amounts back via the common law route of restitution; the Secretary of State’s only recourse is via Section 71 of the Social Security Administration Act.
The following summary is taken from the Supreme Court site’s Press Release, with my comment below:
This appeal concerns the question whether, in cases of social security benefit awards mistakenly inflated due to a calculation error, the Secretary of State is entitled to recover sums overpaid under the common law of unjust enrichment or whether section 71 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 (the “1992 Act”) provides the only route to recovery (nb. the Supreme Court press summary wrongly refers to the Social Security Benefits Act 1992).
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9 December 2010 by Alasdair Henderson
Today MPs will vote on whether to increase the maximum amount universities can charge to £9,000. Contrary to many commentators’ predictions, the student protests against the increase on 10 November have not been an isolated occurrence, but the beginning of a settled campaign. But would the students be able to rely on human rights arguments to resist eviction?
The campaign has been quite literally settled in many cases, as students at (amongst other universities) UCL, SOAS, Oxford, Sheffield, Manchester Met and Newcastle have staged occupations and sit-ins. Some have moved out, but others have occupied lecture theatres since around 24 November and don’t seem to be moving anywhere any time soon. That is, unless the police or university authorities force them out.
The right to protest is covered by Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that:
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8 December 2010 by Rosalind English
This time two years ago two obscure environmental groups, Clientearth and the Marine Conservation Society , took a step that may make more difference to the enforcement of environmental rights in this country than all the recent high-profile “green” NGO campaigns put together.
They submitted a complaint – euphemistically called a “communication” – to the enforcement body of the Aarhus Convention, a treaty which lays down baseline rules for proper environmental justice in the EU, alerting it to various shortcomings in the legal system of England and Wales (inelegantly but conveniently referred to in the report as E & W).
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8 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
I posted last week on the decision of the High Court to uphold the decision of an election court in declaring void the election of Phil Woolas to a seat in Parliament.
The case was of interest from a constitutional standpoint, as it clarified the precise role of the High Court in relation to election court decisions, and in particular whether it could review decisions of the election court in cases where it appeared that judges got the law wrong. The answer is that it can, and as such the courts have in effect expanded their own role in elections. The result is that in future there may be protracted court battles following disputed election results, with election court decisions potentially reaching the Supreme Court.
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7 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
The arrest of Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has meant that the Ministry of Justice’s “radical” reform program for the criminal justice system has received less attention then it might otherwise have.
Although clearly accidental, the timing may suit the justice secretary, who has received criticism from within his own party in relation to his plans to send thousands fewer offenders to jail in the coming years. The MoJ have said:
The green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation sets out plans to break the destructive cycle of crime and prison by ensuring that jails become places of hard work, that rehabilitation programmes are opened up to innovation from the private and charitable sectors, paid by results, and that the priority will now be to reduce the reoffending by people after they have been punished.
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7 December 2010 by Clare Ciborowska
Tzipi Livni
Updated | A new bill which seeks to reform the powers of the police also seeks to make it harder to issue private arrest warrants for universal jurisdiction offences, such as war crimes, torture and hostage taking,
The controversial change would mean that they can only be issued where there is a reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution (see our previous post).
The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill has now started its passage through Parliament, following its introduction to the House of Commons on 30 November 2010.
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6 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
The head of Sky News has argued in a new Guardian article that justice must be televised as allowing TV cameras in court would help restore public faith in criminal proceedings.
Sky news has been campaigning for TV cameras to be allowed in court for the past year. John Ryley argues that the upcoming prosecutions of 5 men accused of abusing the parliamentary expenses system should be televised as the judge in the case has said the matter is “of intense public interest”. Televising proceedings would help restore the loss of confidence in parliament and politics and ensure that judges who are seen are “out of touch” and “liberal” need not escape the spotlight.
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6 December 2010 by Rosalind English
This morning we reported on the case of Sinclair Collis Ltd v Secretary of State for Health & Anor [2010] EWHC 3112 (Admin) – see Isabel McArdle’s post on the case. Rosalind English analyses the implications of the High Court’s decision.
Hard on the heels of Petsafe, the administrative court has been asked once again to give close attention to Article 36 TFEU and member states’ scope for imposing restrictions to free movement of goods (see our post on the “health of animals” derogation). It seems that human health is such a core value of the common market that any reference to it by way of justifying a ban or restriction on goods or services is very hard to resist, particularly when the step is one taken by the legislature rather than the executive.
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3 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
R (on the application of Philip James Woolas) and The Parliamentary Election Court [2010] EWHC 3169 (Admin) – Read judgment / press summary
Phil Woolas has lost his appeal by way of judicial review of the decision to strip him of his election victory in Oldham East and Saddleworth in the 2010 General Election. He has said he will not appeal the decision.
Mr Woolas had to first convince the Administrative Court, which handles judicial reviews of the decisions of public bodies, that it had jurisdiction to hear the claim. He won on this point. However, once it had accepted it could hear the case, the Administrative court went on to uphold most of the decision of the Election Court.
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3 December 2010 by Catriona Murdoch
Family law judges have been unusually vocal recently in sharing their ideas for family justice reform. The latest to put his case is the High Court judge Mr Justice Coleridge, in a speech entitled Lets hear it for the Child; Restoring the Authority of the Family Court, Blue Skies and Sacred Cows given at the Association of Lawyers for Children’s 21st Annual Conference last week.
The traditional role of judges is to speak out in court and stay silent outside of it. But the relatively new head of the family courts, Sir Nicolas Wall, has set a strong example of judicial outspokenness, and it appears that the other judges are following suit in the face of large cuts to the family justice budget. That being said, Mr Justice Coleridge has been a vocal advocate for family justice reform for a number of years.
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2 December 2010 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of Zagorski and Baze) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Archimedes Pharma UK Ltd – read judgment
The Administrative Court has put down a marker on the potential applicability of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights about the morality of certain trade with the United States. The case concerned the export of Sodium Thiopental, an anaesthetic drug that is used as a preliminary to the lethal injection for prisoners on death row. This is the first time a domestic court has made a definitive ruling on the potential role of the EU Charter in domestic law. Earlier this year the Court of Appeal referred a question on the Charter to the ECJ for determination on its relevance to asylum proceedings: see R (S) v Home Secretary & (1) Amnesty International & AIRE Centre (2) UNHCR and our post on the subject.
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1 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
R v Chaytor and others (Appellants) [2010] UKSC 52 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by ex-MPs who argued that the courts do not have jurisdiction to try a Member of Parliament in relation to the submission of an allegedly dishonest claim for Parliamentary expenses or allowances.
The court was unanimous in its judgment. Lord Phillips (President) and Lord Rodger give the lead judgments. The Court held that neither Article 9 of the 1688 Bill of Rights nor the exclusive jurisdiction of the House of Commons poses any bar to the jurisdiction of the Crown Court to try the Appellants.
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The Home Secretary has said that the government will not appeal the High Court’s decision to uphold that there were to be no ‘closed’ hearings at the 7/7 inquests.
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