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RU (Bangladesh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 651 – Read Judgment
Further to our recent post on the deportation of foreign criminals, the matter has once again come to the attention of the Court of Appeal.This case determines how the First-tier Tribunal, the first court of call for challenges to threatened deportations, should consider and weigh the issue of deterrence when deciding whether to deport a single offender.
The court made some interesting statements about the “public interest” aspect of deporting foreign criminals, and how the logic of a deterrence system must work.
Civil liberties groups have responded with opprobrium to the Metropolitan Police’s plan to begin using live facial recognition (LFR) cameras on London’s streets as of next month. Purportedly, the Met’s technology compares the structure of faces to those recorded in a database of suspects, and alerts officers on the scene if a match is found. If no alert is generated, the image is deleted. The Met has claimed that the system is 70% effective at spotting wanted suspects and only produced a false identification in one in a thousand cases. In addition, it claimed 80% of people surveyed backed the move.
As the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill has its Second Reading in the House of Commons today (Monday 24 February), Angela Patrick, Director of Human Rights at JUSTICE considers the Government’s proposals for the future of judicial review.
For law students who slept their way through their first latin 101 lessons in ‘ultra vires’, public law and judicial review may have seemed very detached from the realities of everyday life; less relevant to the man on the Clapham Omnibus than the rigours of a good criminal defence or protection from eviction offered by landlord and tenant law.
The Lord Chancellor may be hoping that the public and Parliamentarians are similarly unfocused.
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.
Julian Assange, the founder and head of Wikileaks, has succeeded in an initial challenge to last week’s refusal to grant bail in his extradition case. And, in an appropriate nod to the internet age, the judge granted two people the right to tweet from the court.
The tweeters (definition: users of Twitter, a social website which allows people to post 140 character messages to people who chose to follow them) are Alexi Mostrous, a Times special correspondent, and Heather Brook, a writer. Mostrous tweeted at 14:30:
judge just gave me explicit permission to tweet proceedings “if it’s quiet and doesn’t disturb anything”. #wikileaks
Access to environmental justice is a subject close to the hearts of various contributors to this blog, as one can see from the posts listed below. But not only to them – Sullivan LJ was the chairman of the working group that in 2008 wrote “Ensuring Access to Environmental Justice in England and Wales”. Jackson LJ returned to the issue in his report on the costs of civil litigation. In December last year the Supreme Court referred to the Court of Justice of the EU, Edwards, a case about the English costs regime, and whether it complies with the Aarhus convention. Finally, in April 2011 the European Commission said it was going to refer the UK to the CJEU for failing to comply with the costs element of the Convention.
So the UKELA seminar on “Developing the new Environmental Tribunal” hosted by Simmons & Simmons on 16th May 2011, was timely, to say the least, particularly as the speakers included Lord Justice Sullivan, and Lord Justice Carnwath the senior president of the Tribunals, and Professor Richard Macrory Q.C., author of a new report on the Environment Tribunal.
Khuja (formerly known as PNM) v. Times Newspapers [2017] UKSC 49, Supreme Court, read judgment
The outcome of this case is summed up in its title, an unsuccessful attempt to retain anonymity in press reporting. It is a stark instance of how someone involved in investigations into very serious offences cannot suppress any allegations which may have surfaced in open court, even though no prosecution was ever brought against them.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular festive trifle of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Celia Rooney.
This week, the Church of Scientology registered a win of sorts in the Supreme Court, while London’s biggest university said no to occupational student protests just as others were contemplating the possibility of gender-segregated talks Meanwhile, the Home Secretary puts forward her answer to modern day slavery, while the Joint Committee on Human Rights puts pressure on Chris Grayling regarding the proposed legal aid reforms.
After a brief hiatus, the Human Rights Round-up is back. Our new team of expert summarisers – Hannah Lynes, Alex Wessely and Laura Profumo – is installed and ready to administer your regular dose of UK human rights news.
This week, Hannah reports on the Global Law Summit, access to justice, and what’s happening in the courts.
In the News
‘If you wrap yourself in the Magna Carta…you are inevitably going to look ridiculous if you then throw cold water on an important part of its legacy.’ Lord Pannick QC was not alone last week (23-28th February) in suggesting that there was some irony in Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling evoking the spirit of the Magna Carta at his launch of the three-day Global Law Summit.
In both cases Christian bakery owners refused to create certain cakes for customers on the basis that it would contravene their religious objection to gay marriage. The judgments in Masterpiece may foreshadow some of the arguments to be discussed in the upcoming UK decision.
In this case, the US Supreme Court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to approach the matter in accordance with its obligation of religious neutrality. The baker’s appeal was therefore upheld — but only on technical grounds.
Background
The owner of Masterpiece, Jack Phillips, refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage ceremony between two of his potential customers, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins. He did, however, say that he would be prepared to make birthday cakes or other products. His stated reason for refusing to make a wedding cake was that to do so would have been a personal endorsement and participation in a ceremony and relationship which contravened his deep and sincerely held religious beliefs.
Caroline Flack appearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court
The intersection between technology and human rights is growing exponentially. In places, the growth is immensely productive. The internet has become integral to how we communicate in moments of historic crisis and transformation. Social networks have played a complex and contradictory role in pivotal episodes from the Arab Spring to #MeToo. For more than three billion people, the internet directly facilitates access to news and information, religion and politics, markets and trade, and even justice. In this country, half the population gets their news from social media. In 2016, a report from the Human Rights Council of the United Nations General Assembly declared access to the internet to be a basic human right. This blog post is itself both byproduct and contributor to the phenomenon.
Omar & Ors, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs [2012] EWHC 1737 (Admin) (26 June 2012) – read judgment
The Divisional Court has ruled that common law principles cannot be used to obtain evidence from the Foreign Secretary for use in a foreign court.
Angus McCullough QC of 1 Crown Office Row appeared as a special advocate in the closed proceedings in this case. He is not the author of this post.
“Norwich Pharmacal” orders are sometimes granted to obtain information from third parties to help the court establish whether unlawful conduct has taken place. A court can in such a case compel the third party to assist the person suffering damage by giving them that information. In the cases of Binyan Mohamad and Shakar Aamer the courts extended the application of these orders to foreign cases. Now it appears that both may have been wrongly decided.
1 Crown Office Row’s Peter Skelton appeared for The Security Services in this case. He is not the author of this post.
Al Rawi and others (Respondents) (Respondents) v The Security Service and others (Appellants) [2011] UKSC 34 – read judgment; read press summary
At the centre of this appeal was the court’s power to order a “closed material procedure” for the whole or part of the trial of a civil claim for damages. The question arose as a “preliminary issue” – a point to be determined on its own – in the appellants’ compensation claim for their alleged detention, rendition and mistreatment by foreign authorities in various locations, including Guantanamo Bay.
In countering the respondents’ claim for compensation, the appellant security services claimed that they had security sensitive material within their possession which they wished the court to consider in their defence but which could not be disclosed to the respondents. They therefore sought a “closed material procedure” for this part of their defence – a procedure whereby a party can withhold certain material from the other side where its disclosure would be contrary to the public interest. Continue reading →
Kiani v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 776 (21 July 2015) – read judgment
In my last post on UKHRB I commented on developments in UK, ECHR and EU jurisprudence relating to procedural fairness in the context of national security.
The developments in this recent case offer some further interesting thoughts on the topic. To explain the case, and put its ramifications in a broader context, this post will be divided into three parts. In the first I outline my original argument as set out in the earlier post. The second will explain the case itself. The third will offer five brief comments on the broader issues the cases touches upon.
In brief, the court in Kiani followed Tariqand held that AF-type disclosure (see below) was not a universal requirement of fairness; the interests of justice could require a lower standard of disclosure without violating the absolute right to a fair hearing. Continue reading →
Wang Yam v Attorney General [2014] EW Misc 10 (CCrimC) 27 February 2014 – read judgment
It is for the UK government to decide whether to vary an order preventing publication of material heard in private in a murder trial, if the offender goes on to petition the European Court of Human Rights. It is not for the Strasbourg Court to determine whether the right to a fair trial should outweigh the risks to UK national security reasons.
The question regarding a state’s obligation not to impede the right of individual petition to Strasbourg arose where the applicant offender applied for an order permitting him to refer to material, which had been restricted on national security grounds during his murder trial, in an application to the European Court of Human Rights. Continue reading →
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RU (Bangladesh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 651 – Read Judgment 
As the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill has its Second Reading in the House of Commons today (Monday 24 February), Angela Patrick, Director of Human Rights at JUSTICE considers the Government’s proposals for the future of judicial review.
The Guardian 
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular festive trifle of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
This week the US Supreme Court handed down judgment in 
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