8 December 2010
Updated | Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested yesterday and refused bail after a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court.
He was not arrested in relation to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, but rather on suspicion of having sexually assaulted two women in Sweden. His lawyers have said that “many believe” the arrest was politically motivated.
7 December 2010
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.
7 December 2010
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.
6 December 2010
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.
6 December 2010
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.
6 December 2010
Sinclair Collis Limited, The Members of National Association of Cigarette Machine Operators (Interested Party) v Secretary of State for Health [2010] EWHC 3112 (Admin) – Read judgment or Rosalind English’s analysis of the decision
The High Court has ruled that the Secretary of State for Health did not breach the human right to peaceful enjoyment of property or European Union law by banning the sale of tobacco products from automatic vending machines.
3 December 2010
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.
3 December 2010
The Supreme Court yesterday handed down judgment in the case of Joseph v Spiller ([2010] UKSC 53), the first time it has considered a libel case since its inception. The panel consisted of Lords Phillips, Rodger, Walker and Brown and Sir John Dyson. There is the usual useful press summary. The background to the case has already been covered in a previous case preview on this blog and the background facts and the case history are not repeated in this post.
Despite branding the underlying dispute between the Motown Tribute Band “the Gillettes” and their entertainment booking service a “considerable … storm in a tea-cup”, the Supreme Court have broadened the scope and application of the defence of fair comment. The Supreme Court did so by reducing the burden formerly placed on defendants to identify facts they are commenting on with ‘sufficient particularity’. Lord Phillips also re-named the defence as “honest comment” (as opposed to Court of Appeal in BCA v Singh [2010] EWCA Civ 350, which favoured “honest opinion” [35]) and called on the Law Commission to consider and review the present state of the defence.
2 December 2010
Cromwell looks on
Chaytor & Ors, R v (Rev 2) [2010] UKSC 52 (01 December 2010) – Read judgment
Updated | The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal of four men accused of fiddling their Parliamentary expenses. In doing so, it has provided a powerful statement of the limits of Parliamentary privilege against court interference, and of its own powers in our separation of powers system.
The background to the case is set out in my post on the Court of Appeal case. The basic summary is that three ex-MPs, Morley, Chaytor and Devine, and one member of the House of Lords, Lord Hanningfield, are charged with false accounting relating to their parliamentary expenses claims.
2 December 2010
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.
Continue reading →
2 December 2010
In January of this year Paul Chambers used Twitter to express his feelings about the possible closure of Robin Hood Airport due to snow, which he feared would thwart his trip to Belfast to meet his new girlfriend, a fellow twitterer going by the name @Crazycolours.
He said via his @pauljchambers Twitter account:
Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
The consequences of his tweet were summarised in the Guardian:
A week later, he was arrested at work by five police officers, questioned for eight hours, had his computers and phones seized and was subsequently charged and convicted of causing a “menace” under the Communications Act 2003 .
1 December 2010
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.
1 December 2010
When the UK supreme court opened for business just over a year ago one of its most exciting innovations was that, for the first time in the UK, hearings would be filmed and recordings made available to broadcasters.
The change followed 20 years of campaigning and preparation, and was heralded as a turning point in the history of our legal system.
So, one year on, are our TV schedules flooded with live feeds of cases of great social importance? Hardly. In fact, Baroness Hale, one of the court’s 11 justices, recently said that although the recordings are available to the media upon request, “they don’t often ask.”
30 November 2010
Schalk and Kopf v. Austria (application no. 30141/04) – Read judgment / press release / press release 2
The European Court of Human Rights has refused permission to appeal in a challenge to the ban on gay marriage in Austria. The effect of the decision is to make the court’s rejection of the same-sex couple’s claim final.
The decision means that the European Court of Human Rights will not force states to allow same-sex couples to marry, for now at least. This has a potential bearing on the UK, where a number of same-sex and heterosexual couples are currently bringing claims against UK laws which permit civil partnerships for same-sex couples but prevents them from marrying.
30 November 2010
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.
This blog is run by 1 Crown Office Row barristers' chambers. Subscribe for free updates here. The blog's editorial team is:
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Jasper Gold
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Editors:
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Angus McCullough KC
David Hart KC
Martin Downs
Jim Duffy
Jonathan Metzer
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