Category: LEGAL TOPICS
26 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Guardian published an editorial today arguing that court judgments should be opened up to the public. The editorial challenges the fact that BAILII, the charity which currently publishes most judgments online, is not searchable on Google.
Broadly speaking, it is good to see The Guardian taking up this somewhat esoteric but important topic. As I have argued on a number of occasions (see e.g. Making Law Accessible to the Public) the Ministry of Justice needs to do more to make “raw” law, that is judgments and legislation, accessible online. But it is important to focus on the right issues.
Case law should, ideally, be searchable on Google. BAILII explains the reason for not making it so:
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26 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
Today, an open letter from 158 lawyers and academics has been published in The Guardian claiming that the law on squatting, on which the Government has proposed reforms, has been misrepresented by politicians and the media.
I am one of the letter’s signatories. Amongst other things, it states that:
a significant number of recent media reports have stated that squatters who refuse to leave someone’s home are not committing a criminal offence and that a change in the law – such as that proposed by the government – is needed to rectify this situation.
The accompanying article is here. One interesting aspect of this campaign is that it was organised in part by one of the longest standing and best legal blogs, Nearly Legal. Nearly Legal have used social media, which an ever increasing number of lawyers follow, to gather many of the signatures. Their response is here and some of their previous posts on the topic here and here.
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22 September 2011 by David Hart KC
Case C‑442/09 Bablok et al v. Freistaat Bayern, Monsanto intervening
The result of this decision by the CJEU is summed up in a pithy summary by EU Business entitled “EU court backs angry honeymaker in GM pollen row.” The underlying question arose when food law met honey law (yes, there is one) met GMO licensing law, It was all about whether adventitious contamination of honey and pollen deriving from GMO maize renders the honey a GMO product.
Paradoxically the beekeeper sought that outcome in what we would call statutory tort proceedings. He sued the State of Bavaria who owned various experimental GM maize plots, for damaging his honey via GM pollen. Monsanto, the real object of the case, said that it didn’t matter really that its GMO pollen was in the pollen, and it didn’t cause damage for which our apiarist could sue. As we shall see, the CJEU decided it did matter – a lot.
Not all of you will know that EU legislators have dedicated a whole Directive to honey; of Council Directive 2001/110/EC. In the lyrical yet precise prose of the Eurocrat: ‘Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant‑sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in honeycombs to ripen and mature.’ : Annex I. Honey consists predominantly of sugars but also contains solid particles derived from honey collection, as Annex II tells us.
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21 September 2011 by Rosalind English
A.A. v. THE UNITED KINGDOM – 8000/08 [2011] ECHR 1345 – Read judgment
The Strasbourg Court has ruled unlawful the deportation of a Nigerian man convicted of rape. Considering the facts of his case afresh, the Court came to the conclusion that the 24 year old student’s right to family life would be violated if he were removed to Nigeria.
The applicant arrived in the United Kingdom in 2000 at the age of 13 join his mother. At the age of 15, he was convicted of rape. After serving less than two years of his four-year sentence he was released on licence in 2004. The Home Office served him with a notice of liability to a deportation order on account of the rape conviction. Although the Immigration Judge of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (“the AIT”) allowed the applicant’s appeal, the Secretary of State’s appeal against this finding ultimately prevailed since it was found that the various factors in respect of his family life and his good conduct in remand did not outweigh the presumption in favour of deportation in accordance with the current version of the Immigration Rules.
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20 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council v Watson [2011] EWHC 2376 (Fam) (01 September 2011) – Read judgment
Sir Nicholas Wall, the President of the Family Division, has suspended a nine-month prison sentence for contempt of court given to Elizabeth Watson, a “private investigator” who published online sex abuse allegations which had been rejected by a series of judges.
The case has involved many of the foot soldiers in a bitter and public battle between the family law system and campaigners who say it is corrupt and not fit for purpose. Recognised this, Lord Justice wall used the opportunity to “dispel a number of myths”. First,
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20 September 2011 by Graeme Hall
As we recently posted, the UK Commission on a Bill of Rights has published its interim advice to Government on reform of the European Court of Human Rights. The Commission made recommendations to achieve the “effective functioning of the Court over the long term”, following which Joshua Rozenberg stated that “everybody now agrees on the need for fundamental reform. It has to happen. And it will.”
But if there is such agreement, can the Commission’s recommendations produce any meaningful reform? Or do the proposals simply rehash old ideas?
by Graeme Hall
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20 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
I posted recently on the ongoing saga surrounding the UK’s implementation of the Hirst No. 2 case, in which the European Court of Human Rights found that the UK’s blanket ban on prisoners voting was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The correspondence between the court and the UK Government is now available and I have reproduced it below.
In short, the UK previously had until 11 October 2011 to “introduce legislative proposals” to end the ban. But it has now been given a reprieve as a result of seeking to intervene in another case, Scoppola v Italy (No. 3) (available in French, English press release here), which is going to the court’s Grand Chamber This is another prisoner voting case.
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19 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated x 2 |Following on from Obiter J’s guest post, when considering the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s attempt to force a Guardian journalist to disclose her source, it is worth revisiting the seminal case of Shayler, R [2002] UKHL 11. The case, which arose shortly after the Human Rights Act came into force, shows how heavily stacked the law is against those accused of causing to leak state secrets, but may also reveal some limited hope for journalists too.
Although it now appears that the case is being brought under section 9 and Schedule 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, it is still worth examining the powers which the police have under both PACE and the Official Secrets Act.
Simply, according to the House of Lords in Shayler, there is no public interest defence to the charges under sections 1 and 4 and none will be implied by the courts as a result of human rights law. However, section 5 was not considered and may still bear fruit should a prosecution be brought under it.
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18 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
Updated |Nine years ago, in March 2002, Amanda “Milly” Dowler (aged 13) was on her way home from school. She was kidnapped and murdered and her body was found in September 2002. In June 2011, Levi Bellfield was convicted of her murder and sentenced to a “whole life” tariff. When Milly went missing, journalists of the News of the World newspaper “hacked” into her voicemail. The fact that this had happened came to public prominence in July 2011 when The Guardian newspaper revealed the story.
The Metropolitan Police are now seeking an order that The Guardian journalists reveal their sources of information about the hacking. There is a suggestion that the Official Secrets Act 1989 may have been breached. The Guardian plans to resist this “extraordinary demand to the utmost” – see The Guardian 17th September – “Hacking: Met use Official Secrets Act to demand Guardian reveals sources.”
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16 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
In Colleen Smith v IC and Devon & Cornwall Constabulary (EA/2011/0006), the requester asked for information on the number of school teachers in specified towns who had been investigated, cautioned and charged under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 between January 2005 and November 2007. The Constabulary eventually relied on the personal data at section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (‘FOIA’).
The Commissioner found that, where the answer was “zero”, this was not personal data and should be disclosed; otherwise, the information could be withheld under section 40. The Tribunal has upheld this decision, albeit for different reasons.
This decision is worth noting on a number of grounds.
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16 September 2011 by David Hart KC
In the UK and EU, there are a lot of statutes and rules about climate change, and relatively little strategic litigation. Hop over the Pond, and we see exactly the reverse, a reflection of different political dynamics with the hostility of the US Congress to climate change legislation.
It is interesting to look at some of the US cases, not only because they lock horns with one of the big issues of our time, but also because they reflect a common problem the courts face in deciding their role when confronted with science which is, or is said to be, controversial.
We should start with the groundbreaking decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (549 U.S. 497 (2007)). The US Supreme Court held that the US Environmental Protection Agency had a duty to use its existing powers under the Clean Air Act and assess whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from vehicles were a danger to the environment and, if that was the case, to regulate them. In the litigation, and contrary to the opinion of two of its previous general counsels, it had denied that it was under a duty to do so. This judgment was a highly important ruling, as it meant that no new legislation was necessary to get the climate change ball rolling. Thereafter the EPA turned to how it should regulate GHG emissions, as we shall see.
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15 September 2011 by Matthew Flinn
Voyias v Information Commissioner and the London Borough of Camden EA/2011/0007 – Read Judgment
The First Tier Tribunal has overturned a decision of the Information Commissioner and ordered Camden Council to provide information about empty properties in the borough to a former member of the Advisory Service for Squatters.
When one thinks of the term “human rights”, the first example that springs to mind is likely to be the right to life, or the right not to be tortured or enslaved – fundamental guarantees that protect the basic dignity of our human condition. Yet human rights are also intended to serve the core goal of preserving and enhancing the strength and rigour of democratic and pluralistic societies, and so the European Convention of Human Rights (EHCR) also contains provisions guarding against discrimination, and protecting freedom of religion and expression.
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15 September 2011 by Alasdair Henderson
R (JG and MB ) v. Lancashire County Council [2011] EWHC 2295 (Admin) – read judgment here.
Public sector cuts are back in the news, with the trade unions warning of their plans to stage the biggest series of strikes in a generation. However, attempts to take the fight against the cuts into the courts as well as onto the streets were dealt a serious blow recently, as the Administrative dismissed an application by two disabled women for judicial review of Lancashire County Council’s decision to significantly reduce their budget for adult social care services.
This case provides a very helpful summary of the courts’ approach to public bodies’ equality duties (now the new general Public Sector Equality Duty in s.149 of the Equality Act 2010). It is also a reminder that the courts are reluctant to interfere with difficult social or economic decisions made by elected officials, as long as there has been proper consideration of the relevant factors, despite other recent cases where such decisions have been struck down.
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14 September 2011 by Lucy Series
Last month the Ministry of Justice published a report of a pilot project that ran last year whereby participating family courts produced and published on Bailii written judgments of specified Children Act 1989 cases. The project had three main aims:
- to increase transparency and improve public understanding of the family justice system by publishing anonymised judgments in all serious children cases;
- to help parties by providing written judgments in all cases, even where a matter was not contested;
- to provide judgments which the children involved could access in later life.
The family courts are often perceived as ‘secretive’ or aloof; Munby LJ has made excellent arguments for greater transparency far more eloquently than I could hope to do in this speech (pdf)
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13 September 2011 by Isabel McArdle
Lord Justice Jackson spoke in strong terms last week to the Cambridge Law Faculty on the controversial topic of legal aid and legal costs reforms.
The architect of the proposed reforms to legal costs made clear his position on the government’s proposed amendments, set out in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which was reviewed by the Committee of the House of Commons today, 13 September (listen to the committee recording here). He was keen to highlight which parts of the reforms reflect he views expressed in his report, and which parts he does not consider to be in the interests of justice. He said, in summary:
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