Category: In the news
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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1 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated – Spiller and another (Appellants) v Joseph and others (Respondents) [2010] UKSC 53 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has overturned the Court of Appeal to unanimously hold that the defence of fair comment should be open to a booking agent which said on its website that a Motown tribute band, the Gillettes, were “unprofessional”. The court has also renamed the defence “honest comment”.
The decision will be a relief to those who think that Britain’s libel laws are too tough and that the fair comment defence – an important element of free speech rights – has become too difficult to deploy. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court recommended in its judgment that the whole issue of fair comment should be reviewed by the Law Commission or an expert committee. Presumably, this will be on the agenda for Lord Neuberger’s upcoming review of libel law. The Guardian has commented on the judgment here.
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1 December 2010 by Richard Mumford
On 30 November 2010 the High Court handed down its written ruling upholding the 7/7 inquests Coroner’s decision that there were to be no ‘closed’ hearings at the inquests. An analysis of the Coroner’s decision can be found here. The High Court had previously given its decision, with an indication that reasons were to follow.
The Divisional Court of 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.
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30 November 2010 by Rosalind English
Big business between government and property developers may be at risk from public interest challenges in the courts if current obstacles are removed.
Following critical findings by a UN environmental body, the Government has set out its latest proposals for allocating the costs burden in environmental cases. The current position is that an applicant who seeks to dispute the lawfulness of a decision, say, to grant permission for a development, will only get a court order preventing commencement of construction if they are prepared to pay for the developer’s loss should their claim fail at the full trial of the merits.
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26 November 2010 by Rosalind English
MA (Somalia) (Respondent) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 49 – read judgment (press summary in earlier post)
The Supreme Court has ruled that where the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) had directed itself correctly as to the impact of an asylum seeker’s lies on his claim, the Court of Appeal should have been very slow to find that it had gone on to apply that direction incorrectly.
This case brings to the fore the very difficult task facing immigration judges trying to determine the veracity of claimants’ testimony in asylum cases. The Supreme Court declined to express a conclusive view on the standard of proof in this area, a point which was acknowledged to be “both difficult and important”. It was left for an authoritative decision by that Court – but when such an occasion arise? The importance of settling this point cannot be overstated.
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24 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Juries are often being hindered by judges’ interventions, Lord Justice Moses has argued in the Annual Law Reform Lecture at Inner Temple.
In an illuminating and entertaining speech, he argued that many of the directions to juries are unhelpful and given in a “foreign tongue”, and that we should “no longer pretend that judges can assist a jury’s recollection by a recitation of the facts”.
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24 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The House of Lords has voted against the Public Bodies Bill for a second time, making it more likely that the so-called Henry VIII powers buried within it will be revised.
The House defeated the bill by 235 votes to 201. The Bill, which has already attracted attention for seeking to abolish 192 quangos, was heavily criticised by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. The committee said that the powers given to ministers under the bill to change the statute book were too broad, and needed to be limited by procedural safeguards (see this post). It argued:
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24 November 2010 by Rosalind English
Iraqis whose applications for asylum are unsuccessful will be continued to be deported, according to a government minister. The announcement comes despite the European Court of Human Rights effectively calling for a freeze on the practice.
The BBC reported on Monday that Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt told the them that Iraq was now considered safe enough for people to return to. An earlier post explored the legal implications of the return by the UK of Baghdad last year. The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) held that the degree of indiscriminate violence in Iraq was not so high that the appellants could resist return.
Other parties, such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, maintain that much of Iraq remains unsafe, although the majority are sent to the North where explosions and shootings are not the danger they are in the South. But as long as the UK government maintain the view that Iraq is no longer a war-torn country, there are no grounds for the Iraqi’s continued presence in here.
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24 November 2010 by Maria Roche
The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Commitee of the United Nations has narrowly voted to remove sexual orientation from a draft resolution against extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
In light of the guarantee of the right to life, liberty and security of person in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the resolution condemns all extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and demands that all States take effective action to prevent, combat, investigate and eliminate such executions.
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