6 January 2013 by Sam Murrant
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
This week’s major stories include deportation appeals, gay marriage, the petition for a posthumous pardon of Alan Turing on the centenary of his birth, and some discussion on the nature of paedophilia. This week also saw the new year rung in, and as such many legal blogs (including this one) have been running articles about the year that was. For those curious over whether they’ve missed anything, or looking to reminisce, here is a list of articles, sorted by topic:
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6 January 2013 by Adam Wagner
In a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister has previewed a new ‘deport first, appeal second’ approach to deportation cases:
… in specific response to the never-ending Abu Qatada case, and vexatious use of the European Convention on Human Rights, the PM is looking at a new and radical option. “I am fed up with seeing suspected terrorists play the system with numerous appeals. That’s why I’m keen to move to a policy where we deport first, and suspects can appeal later.” Under this new arrangement, deportees would only be able to appeal against the decision while still in this country – thus suspending their removal – if they faced “a real risk of serious, irreversible harm”.
It seems to me that this approach is anchored in last month’s European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber) decision in DE SOUZA RIBEIRO v. FRANCE – 22689/07 – HEJUD [2012] ECHR 2066 (summary here). See in particular paragraphs 82
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3 January 2013 by Adam Wagner
Welcome to the fourth and final instalment in the epic UK Human Rights Blog review of 2012. In this post, I will review for your reading pleasure the very recent past: October to December. If you need to catch up:
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2 January 2013 by Adam Wagner
In March I complained that the Commission on a Bill of Rights should open up. Well, two weeks after publication of the Commission’s final report(s), two of the Liberal Democrat-appointed commissioners have given their insider perspectives of the Commission in an article in the London Review of Books.
Nothing in Helena Kennedy QC and Philippe Sands QC’s article is particularly surprising. The Commissioners emerge as a dysfunctional group of seasoned advocates on two sides of a case, with no presiding judge to rein them in or decide who was right. The report itself, with its bewildering array of separate papers and minority reports, demonstrated how little common ground there was between the commissioners.
I recommend reading the article in full, but here are a few interesting tidbits. Of course, some caution is necessary as the other members of the Commission (particularly the Conservative ones) may remember things differently.
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1 January 2013 by Adam Wagner
Happy new year! I hope that none of your new year’s eves were ruined by worrying when the next instalment of my year in review would arrive in your inboxes. Anyway, here we go with July to September.
If you need to catch up:
Now on to Part 3…
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31 December 2012 by Adam Wagner
Despite the Leveson Report, the Daily Mail’s brief flirtation with the Human Rights Act has not even lasted a month. This article by Home Affairs Correspondent Jack Doyle (Twitter: @jackwdoyle) is a weird one, even by the Mail’s standards. Here is the headline:
£500,000 a week in legal aid for prisoners’ human rights claims: YOU pay for them to seek easier life or early release
Clear, right? We are apparently spending £26m per year on prisoners’ human rights claims. And here is the first line:
Taxpayers are handing nearly £500,000 a week in legal aid to prisoners to help them make human rights claims.
That’s sounds like a lot of money to spend on prisoners’ human rights claims! But wait, there’s more…
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31 December 2012 by David Hart KC
El-Masri v. The Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia, Grand Chamber of ECtHR, 13 December 2012, read judgment
In a hard-hitting judgment, the 17 judges of the Grand Chamber found Macedonia (FYROM) responsible for the extraordinary rendition of Mr El-Masri, a German national, by the CIA to Afghanistan. We have all seen the films and read about this process – but even so the account given by the Court is breath-taking. And in so doing, most of the members of the Court made explicit reference to the importance of a right to the truth – not simply for El-Masri, the applicant, but for other victims, and members of the public generally. And the story is all the more chilling because the whole episode appears to have been caused by mistaken identity.
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31 December 2012 by Daniel Isenberg
Another judge speaks out
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our previous roundups here.
by Daniel Isenberg
A relatively quiet news-week in the world of human rights, with judges and politicians having (in some cases) a well-earned break. Same-sex marriage managed to remain in the headlines with High Court Judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, saying it was a ‘minority issue’. Looking back over the past few weeks there has been some recent interesting commentary on the European Court of Human Rights’ decision against Macedonia; as well as the domestic High Court’s ruling on Scientology. Finally, a pair of articles on the historical and recent relationship between Jews and human rights.
You may also notice that the UK Human Rights Blog has a slightly refreshed design – please do send us your comments if you have any. If you are looking for some new year’s reading, why not try:
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30 December 2012 by Adam Wagner
2012 has been a busy year on the UK human rights front, never short of controversy, hyperbole and even some interesting points of legal principle along the way.
Here are some of the biggest stories from April to June 2012. The first part of this post, January to March, is here. Feel free to comment on my choices, and add your own if you think something is missing.
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29 December 2012 by Adam Wagner
2012 has been a busy year on the UK human rights front, never short of controversy, hyperbole and even some interesting points of legal principle along the way.
The Human Rights Act 1998, twelve years young, has been under fairly constant attack from politicians and newspapers. Meanwhile, the HRA has been operating pretty well in the courts, with judges producing a steady stream of interesting home-grown human rights judgments. The European Court of Human Rights has produced some fascinating and controversial judgments, and has also, thanks to the UK’s presidency, signed up to some significant reforms.
Here are a few highlights from January to March – hopefully I will have time to complete the rest of the year!
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27 December 2012 by Adam Wagner
Hello all, and happy holidays! 2012 has been a cracking year for the UK Human Rights Blog. As is customary, below are the top 2012 posts by hit count, but also a few of my own highlights of 2012:
- After just over two and a half years in operation the blog is now achieving our aim (we hope) of informing and enhancing the human rights debate, which is no less controversial and caricatured than it was in March 2010.
- The weekly Human Rights Roundups have become one of the most popular features of the blog, thanks to our fantastic updaters Daniel Isenberg, Sam Murrant and Wessen Jazrawi who moved on to other things in 2012.
- In our third year we smashed one million hits and are already getting close to two million. We are regularly quoted across the media and for the first time this year, in the Northern Ireland Assembly. We are now getting close to 100,000 hits per month and are consistently ranked as the top legal blog on the ‘e-buzzing’ influence rankings.
- We have over 4,000 email subscribers (just enter your email address in the box to the right to subscribe for free), over 2,000 on our Facebook fan page and 2,000+ on our @ukhumanrightsb Twitter account. You can also follow me on @adamwagner1 and my fantastic co-editors Angus McCullough QC on @amccqc and Rosalind English on @rosalindenglish.
- Thank you to all of the fantastic contributors from 1 Crown Office Row (the barristers’ chambers which runs the blog) as well as guest contributors from elsewhere, who have contributed to almost 1,500 individual posts. I have taken more of a back seat editorial role this year so as to get on with my day job (I am a practising barrister, honest – you can read about me here), an arrangement which has strengthened the blog.
- Thank you also to all of those who have commented on individual posts both on the blog and on Twitter, which has been particularly vibrant in legal debates this year. Some of those debates have been fantastic and they add immeasurably to the content on the blog. As always, we welcome comments on any aspect of the blog, including the refreshed design which you may have noticed in the past few days. Thank you also to the growing army of fantastic legal bloggers (see our links section on the sidebar) who regularly link to the blog in their own post.
- One final reminder: all of our blog posts are categorised by legal topic and article of the European Convention on Human Rights: you can access the categories by way of the drop down menu on the right sidebar (for example family law, technology, Article 8 etc) as well as by clicking categories under individual posts. Our index of European Convention Rights is here.
Without further ado, here are the top twenty posts of 2012:
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24 December 2012 by Sam Murrant
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
This week the Commission on a Bill of Rights reported its findings, and commentary on the report has dominated the blogoshpere. We also have some analysis on the latest developments in the Hillsborough saga, analysis of the Redfearn (the BNP bus driver case) case and comments on prosecutions involving social media.
You may also notice that the UK Human Rights Blog has a slightly refreshed design – please do send us your comments if you have any.
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22 December 2012 by David Hart KC
Chagos Islanders v. United Kingdom, ECtHR 4th Section, 11 December 2012 read admissibility decision
The set of injustices which led to these claims is well known – and see my posts here and here. For the uninitiated, in the 1960s, the US wanted Diego Garcia (one of the Chagos Islands) as a major air base. It spoke nicely to the UK, its owners, who consequently evicted and banned all the inhabitants from it and the neighbouring islands. The constitutional arrangements were apparently decorous. A new UK colony was established (the British Indian Ocean Territory or BIOT) with a Commissioner to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Territory.
The UN was told that the population consisted of migrant workers, their position had been fully protected, and they had been consulted in the process – none of this in fact happened. Those evicted mainly went to Mauritius and the Seychelles. So the peace, order and good government in fact forthcoming from the UK amounted to total depopulation for military objectives.
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20 December 2012 by Guest Contributor
Don’t be fooled! We have been led to believe there was a two-way split on the government-appointed Bill of Rights Commission, which published its report on Tuesday, but the split was at least three-way. The Commissioners tell us that ‘it [was] not always easy to disentangle in the opinions expressed to [them] what are tactical positions rather than fundamental beliefs’. The same must surely be said of the report’s seven ‘majority’ authors.
The two dissenters who did not sign up to the majority’s conclusions – Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws QC and Philippe Sands QC – are clear: the time is not ripe for a new UK Bill of Rights. This is because (a) the devolution arrangements in the UK, in which the HRA is successfully embedded, are potentially about to undergo significant change (post-Scottish referendum) (b) the majority of respondents to the Commission’s consultation support the HRA as the UK’s Bill of Rights which incorporates the ECHR rights (but not the European Court case law) into domestic law and (c) for some Commissioners, a Bill of Rights would be a means to decoupling the connection between the United Kingdom and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In sum, “the case for a UK bill of rights has not been made” and the arguments against such a Bill “remain far more persuasive, at least for now.”
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20 December 2012 by Rosalind English
R on the application of Louisa Hodkin v Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages [2012] EWHC 3635 (Admin) – read judgment
Ouseley J has dismissed a challenge by the applicant against the Registrar General’s decision not to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology as ‘a place of meeting for religious worship’ which in turn means it is not a registered building for the solemnisation of marriages.
The following report is drawn from the Court’s press summary
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