Category: Politics / Public Order
10 August 2011 by Adam Wagner
England has experienced a fourth consecutive night of rioting and looting in its cities, prompted by the shooting by police of Mark Duggan in Tottenham.
New and social media have seen almost blanket coverage of the events, so I have little to add, save to link to some interesting legal coverage of the issues involving policing policy, blaming social media, vigilante justice, journalists’ rights and paying for damage under riot law.
One issue which sadly has not arisen from these riots is freedom of speech; it would appear that there has been little sense or motive behind the violence following the initial catalyst.
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5 August 2011 by Adam Wagner
The UK Bill of Rights Commission has launched a public consultation on whether we need a Bill of Rights.
The consultation document is here and reproduced below. You have until 11 November 2011 to respond and you can do so via email or post.
The document provides a useful and fairly noncontroversial summary of rights protections as they currently exist within the UK constitutional structure. It does not, however, provide any information at all about what a “bill of rights” might entail or how such instruments work in other countries: contrast the far more detailed (and very useful) document produced in 2010 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
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13 June 2011 by Matthew Hill
McCaughey & Anor, Re Application for Judicial Review [2011] UKSC 20 (18 May 2011)- Read judgment
The Supreme Court has followed the European Court of Human Rights in ruling that an inquest into the death of two people killed before the introduction of the Human Rights Act is still bound by the rules laid down by that Act. In so doing, it preferred a “poorly reasoned and unstable decision” of the Strasbourg Court to a clearly drafted Act of Parliament and a recent decision of the House of Lords. How did this happen, should it have done so – and does it really matter?
The case concerned an appeal to the Supreme Court against a decision from the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal on which we have previously blogged at length. The appellants were the families of two men killed by the British Army during an attack on a police station in Northern Ireland in 1990. Allegations were made that a “shoot to kill policy” was being operated by the security forces.
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18 May 2011 by Isabel McArdle
R (on the application of Evans) v The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice [2011] EWHC 1146 (Admin) – Read judgment
The High Court has found that the Ministry of Justice, when making a decision to cease the state’s funding of judicial review challenges on purely public interest grounds (apart from one exception), took into account the fact that to do so would reduce the number of decisions being made which were not in the government’s interests. Unsurprisingly, the Court to concluded that the decision was unlawful and should be quashed.
The Applicant applied for judicial review of a decision by the Respondent to amend the Legal Services Commission (LSC) Funding Code, which funds litigation for those who meet certain criteria. The effect of the amendments, which were introduced in April 2010, was to prevent public funding by the LSC for judicial review proceedings (challenging decisions of public bodies) which were pure public interest challenges. That is, where the Applicant stood to gain nothing from the litigation and was bringing it solely to promote a particular public interest. The one exception was in environmental cases.
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22 April 2011 by Matthew Flinn
R (Moos and Anor) v The Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis [2011] EWHC 957 (Admin) – Read Judgment
The High Court has decided that the actions of police in “kettling” climate change protestors during the G20 summit were unlawful.
In the aftermath of the global credit crunch, the second G20 Summit, which was to commence on 2 April 2009, was an obvious target of public frustration and anger in respect of a range of economic and social issues. Thus on 1 April, two large demonstrations took place in the City of London. One was staged near the Bank of England, directed primarily at the (mis)management of the world’s financial markets by banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland. The other was set up as a “Climate Camp” outside the Carbon Exchange Building in Bishopsgate, and was directed at environmental concerns.
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4 April 2011 by Matthew Flinn
The proposition that burglars have rights incites debate, and sometimes anger, which is often directed towards the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention of Human Rights. However, on closer examination, the idea of “burglars’ rights” is not a new phenomenon in English law, and nor has it been imposed upon us by Strasbourg. The rights that burglars enjoy have long been part of the fabric of English common law.
There is nothing new about the idea that criminals in general, and burglars in particular, have forfeited their human rights by virtue of their criminality.
As Michael Cholbi of the University of New York has described in his article discussing felon disenfranchisement in the United States, “A Felon’s Right to Vote”, the strong conviction held by some that criminals should not enjoy the benefit of human rights is founded upon a basic intuition that “criminal acts alter the moral status of wrongdoers, permitting us to do to them what is otherwise unjust”. Essentially, having demonstrated an unwillingness to regulate their own conduct, criminals cease to be an object of moral concern.
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30 March 2011 by Rosalind English
Lumba v Secretary of State for the Home Deparment – a case of driving government policy further underground?
We have already reported on this appeal by three foreign nationals who have served sentences of imprisonment in this country (“FNPs”). They were detained pursuant to Schedule 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 and their challenge to the legality of this detention was successful. But the appeal was secured by a majority of 3 with strong dissenting opinions which merit close consideration here.
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28 March 2011 by Alasdair Henderson
The Mayor of London v. Brian Haw & others [2011] EWHC 585 (QB) – read judgment.
The High Court has ruled that it would not be a breach of Articles 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of assembly and association) to grant a possession order in respect of Parliament Square Gardens (“PSG”) and an injunction compelling protesters to dismantle and remove all tents and other structures erected on PSG. The potential effect of this might be to remove Brian Haw, the peace campaigner who has been protesting almost non-stop outside Parliament for the best part of a decade.
This is the latest in a long-running series of cases exploring the extent of the freedom to protest. We have analysed the previous court decisions about the Parliament Square protesters here and here. The issue of restrictions on freedom of assembly and freedom of expression has been a hot topic in recent months more generally, having also come up recently in the contexts of the student protests last year, political asylum seekers and hate speech.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
As well as blaming bloggers for media frenzies in yesterday’s Law in Action interview, the Attorney General also made some interesting comments on the UK’s bold new tactic on prisoner votes (see my post on Monday), which is effectively to try to appeal an unappealable ruling.
He said (from 19:20) that the UK “takes its responsibility seriously” and that it would be seeking to reform the court when it takes on the chairmanship later this year. “In any political process” he reminded Rozenberg, “the movement of the tectonic plates is always going to be a bit rough” (please note that the programme was recorded before the Japanese earthquakes). He would not say, however, whether the government would do anything to comply with the ruling in Hirst No. 2.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Attorney General has warned publishers that the law may be changed to prevent them revealing the names of criminal suspects before they are charged. He also blamed the “massive” and “frenzied”coverage of pre-charge suspects in part on pressure on newspapers from the blogosphere.
Dominic Grieve told Joshua Rozenberg on yesterday’s Law in Action (listen here):
We seem to be living a world where because of competing interests on newspapers, perhaps in part because of the internet, because of the fact they are competing with the blogosphere where people are publishing a great deal of material, national newspapers are keen to give as much background detail to their readers as possible at early stages of criminal investigations. (09:25)
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3 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Snyder v. Phelps (09-751), United States Supreme Court – Read judgment
A recent decision of the United States Supreme Court, in which it upheld the rights of a radical anti-gay Christian group to protest at military funerals, provides a useful opportunity to compare free speech protections here to those provided over the pond.
By way of comparison, five men recently failed in a challenge to their public order criminal convictions for protesting with similar signs at a homecoming parade for British soldiers. What does this say about our respective free speech protections?
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1 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
The coalition government wants to reduce the national deficit by billions, but is facing regular court challenges against its decisions to cut budgets. Some have been successful, such as the challenge to the cancellation of a school building programme and to London Councils’ decision to cut the London boroughs’ grants scheme budget — and there are more to come.
It is important to understand the basis on which individuals can challenge decisions that affect them, why unelected judges have the power to alter decisions of elected officials, and how public authorities can avoid being vulnerable to successful challenges in future. The key is accountability.
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21 February 2011 by Isabel McArdle
Munim Abdul and Others v Director of Public Prosecutions [2011] EWHC 247 (Admin) – Read judgment
The High Court has ruled that prosecution of a group of people who had shouted slogans, including, “burn in hell”, “baby killers” and “rapists” at a parade of British soldiers, was not a breach of their right to freedom of expression, protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Five men were convicted of using threatening, abusive or insulting words within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby (contrary to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986). The men launched an appeal, raising amongst other things the question of whether the decision to prosecute them for shouting slogans and waving banners close to where the soldiers and other members of the public were was compatible with Article 10.
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16 February 2011 by Adam Wagner
Law by crowd
The new Protection of Freedoms Bill has become the first proposed law to be opened to public comments via the internet. This seemingly small technological advance could have very exciting effects.
The comments system works just like a blog post. Any member of the public can leave comments on any particular provision of the draft law. The deadline for comments is 7th March.
The Prime Minister says that the Public Reading Stage, which is touchingly in “beta”, will “improve the level of debate and scrutiny of bills by giving everyone the opportunity to go online and offer their views” on new laws.” “That”, he suggests “means better laws – and more trust in our politics.”
He might just be right.
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15 February 2011 by Isabel McArdle
JR1, Re Judicial Review [2011] NIQB 5 – Read judgment
A decision of the Northern Ireland high court has highlighted the continued narrow definition of “standing”, or the right to bring a claim, under the Human Rights Act 1998.
An 8-year-old child applied to bring a claim, which included a challenge under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life), to the decision by police to introduce tasers in Northern Ireland.
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