Category: Article 8 | Right to Privacy / Family
8 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Ain't no sovereignty clause
Some of this week’s human rights news, in bite-size form. The full list of our external links can be found on the right sidebar or here.
Speeches: “The English Law of Privacy: An Evolving Human Right” – Lord Walker – UKSC blog: Supreme Court Justice Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe gave a speech to Anglo-Australasian Lawyers Society on the subject of privacy. The lecture contains an interesting overview of the current law of privacy, particularly in relation to the media.
Kenneth Clarke reveals what cuts will mean for the courts – Joshua Rozenberg: The Ministry of Justice has to make £2bn cuts from its £9bn budget (see our post on where the cuts are likely to come from). According the justice ministers’ Tory conference speech, legal aid is in line for a “total review” – no surprises there – and that popular panacea, alternative dispute resolution, will be encouraged and court discouraged. Rozenberg concludes: “Things are not going to get better and nobody should pretend otherwise. All we can hope for is the best publicly funded legal system that we can afford.” Difficult times ahead for access to justice.
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6 October 2010 by Matthew Flinn
CA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWHC 2278 (10 September 2010) – Read judgment
The High Court has ruled that a a control order which required the “controlee” to relocate and live at an address in Ipswich, away from his family in Crawley, was unlawful.
In Secretary of State for the Home Department v AP [2010] UKSC 24, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal of a man subject to a control order based on the argument that confinement to a flat 150 miles away from his family amounted to a breach of his human rights under Article 5 of the ECHR (right to liberty). The case of CA provides another example of the court striking down a relocation provision in a control order, and is the latest in a long series of court judgments which have chipped away at the controversial scheme.
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5 October 2010 by Rosalind English
DFT v TFD [2010] EWHC 2335 (QB) (27 September 2010) – Read the judgment
Updated | In a recent restraint of publication case, the High Court has assessed the conflicting requirements of open justice and freedom of speech versus the privacy interests of the applicant.
The High Court was asked to consider continuing restraint of publication of what was said to be private and confidential information. The applicant alleged that the respondent had been blackmailing or attempting to blackmail him, and had threatened to make public private and confidential information concerning a sexual relationship between them unless she was paid very substantial sums. The applicant not only sought continuation of the injunction restraining publication but a prohibition on publishing the fact of the order as well, to avoid “jigsaw” identification of the applicant by the media.
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4 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Coventry City Council v X, Y and Z (Care Proceedings: Costs: Identification of Local Authority) [2010] EWHC B22 (Fam) – Read judgment
Coventry City Council has been ordered to pay £100,000 in costs and has been severely criticised by the High Court for child protection failures. What is particularly interesting about the case is the unusual decision of the High Court to disclose the name of the offending council at the request of the BBC.
Judge Bellamy decided the main case in February, ruling that the council, which had accused the children’s parents of faking their illnesses, had “fallen below acceptable standards”. The council had attempted to withdraw care orders for three children at the last moment after it admitted to not having enough evidence to back up its claims. The judge was so unimpressed with the council’s conduct of the case that he ordered them to pay the parents’ costs of £100,000.
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30 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated The High Court has ruled that the Legal Service Commission’s legal aid tender process was “unfair, unlawful and irrational”. The decision came in a judicial review of the tender brought by the Law Society.
According to the Law Society’s press release:
The failure of the LSC to anticipate, let alone manage, the outcome of the process was the latest and perhaps most alarming of the LSC’s apparently haphazard attempts to reshape legal aid…
The LSC’s actions would have seen the number of offices where the public could get subsidised help with family cases drastically cut from 2400 to 1300.
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30 September 2010 by Rosalind English
We reported earlier on the threat by EC Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding to institute infringement proceedings against France in respect of its expulsion of Roma and the dismantling of their encampments. It seems now that the Commission itself may not have the stomach for an action expressly based on the ban on discrimination in the EC Treaty and the Free Movement Directive.
As the Darren O’Donavan reports in Human Rights in Ireland,
The Commission decided to threaten a less controversial legal action against France for not having correctly transposed the Free Movement Directive into national legislation.
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30 September 2010 by Rosalind English
J M v. The United Kingdom – 37060/06 [2010] ECHR 1361 – Read judgment
The European Court of Rights has declared that rules on child maintenance prior to introduction of the Civil Partnership Act discriminated against those in same-sex relationships.
The events happened nearly a decade ago and the law in relation to same-sex couples has greatly altered since, so it will be of limited relevance to those paying child benefit now. Of more interest is the reasoning of the majority in deciding the case under the right to peaceful enjoyment of property rather than the right to family life.
The case summary is based on the Court’s press release, and is followed by my comment.
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27 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
A, R (on the application of) v B [2010] EWHC 2361 (Admin) (21 July 2010) – Read judgment
When should the police disclose a person’s private sexual practices to his employer? The high court has just ruled that a detective inspector breached a man’s human right to privacy by telling his employer that he had been taking pictures of short-skirted women in the street without their knowledge.
The case of ‘A’ raises important questions of the extent of the police’s duty to keep the peace and prevent crimes before they happen. This duty can come into conflict with the human right to respect of private and family life , which can be breached by the state in order to keep the public safe.
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26 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Last week I posted on a speech given by Sir Nicholas Wall on family justice reform. The speech has been widely reported: see the BBC, Zoe Williams’ challenge to Sir Nicholas’ point that intelligent parents made worse litigants, and this thorough analysis from Marylin Stowe.
It should not be forgotten, however, that Sir Nicholas’ speech was to Families Need Fathers (FNF), a fathers’ rights lobby group – see the Wikipedia entry on the movement’s history.
There are two interesting articles on fathers’ rights in this morning’s Observer, the second of which comments on the speech. FNF is, according to the Observer, “at the forefront of a shift in tone in fathers’ rights – away from the notorious stunts of Fathers 4 Justice, which involved grown men dressed as superheroes unfurling banners on public monuments, towards a professional lobbying approach, deploying reasoned argument and concern for the child.”
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23 September 2010 by Rosalind English
Updated x 2 | Kay and Others v United Kingdom (European Court of Human Rights, 21st September) – Read judgment
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK violated the human rights of short-term tenants of council property whose leases had been terminated. The decision will not, however, prove much help to evicted tenants in similar situations in the future, although it should encourage courts to take their personal circumstances into account when deciding if they should be evicted.
The applicants were occupiers of housing units owned by Lambeth borough council under leases which had been provided by a charitable housing trust. Lambeth brought possession proceedings after the leases were terminated in 1999. The applicants complained that these proceedings breached their right to respect for private and home life under Article 8 (the right to a family life). They were unsuccessful before the domestic courts but the Strasbourg Court found a violation of Article 8, insofar as the applicants had been prevented from raising it as a defence.
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21 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Update The president of the family courts, Sir Nicholas Wall, has given a wide-ranging speech to Families Needs Fathers. In it he outlined his own vision for change and also sounded a warning that legal aid in family cases may soon be abolished.
On legal aid, he said “you do not need a crystal ball to see that legal aid for private law proceedings is likely to be further diminished if not abolished“. This may not come as a surprise to those who have been following the family legal aid tender debacle. But the practical outcome of a reduction or abolition of Legal Aid will be that when cases do come to court, more will have to be accomplished, and faster, before the money runs out. Sir Nicholas suggests some ways of achieving this.
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15 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Eady to go
The Lord Chief Justice has announced the appointment of Mr Justice Tugendhat as Judge in charge of the Jury and Non-Jury Lists with effect from 1 October 2010. This makes him the senior ‘media judge’ in England and Wales, and he will play an important role in balancing rights to privacy against freedom of expression.
The Jury and Non-Jury lists contains general civil law, including defamation and privacy. The Judge in charge has responsibility for managing the work in the lists and assigning judges to cases.
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10 September 2010 by Rosalind English
A district court in California has ruled that the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is unconstitutional, and has awarded the plaintiffs a permanent injunction barring further enforcement of the statute embodying the policy. Read judgment.
The Times reports today that Judge Virginia Philips found that the policy violated the plaintiffs’ rights to substantive due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and their rights of freedom of speech, association, and to petition the government, guaranteed by the First Amendment.
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6 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
What does Wayne Rooney’s alleged philandering have to do with human rights? In itself, not very much. But a recent spate of exposés in and of the press has exposed more than a footballer’s indiscretions.
The starting point from a human rights perspective is the fragile relationship between two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights; namely, the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression. Article 8 provides that everyone has the “right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” This right is qualified, in the sense that it is possible for a state authority to breach privacy rights if it is (amongst other things) necessary in a democratic society.
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3 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated, 3 Sep, 16:35 | The Home Office is to announce a review of UK extradition agreements with other countries, including the controversial and some say unbalanced agreement with the United States. This represents a provisional success for campaigners against certain extradition agreements.
According to reports, the review will include the Extradition Act 2003 which implemented into law the UK-United States extradition treaty. It will also consider the European Arrest Warrant, which was used for 50% more arrests last year. The review fulfils the pledge made in the coalition’s program for government to ”review the operation of the Extradition Act – and the US/UK extradition treaty – to make sure it is even-handed”.
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