Search Results for: prisoner voting/page/16/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.

War crimes arrest warrant law to change

7 December 2010 by Clare Ciborowska

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.

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Duty of care owed by UK ship agent to Bangladeshi worker?

17 July 2020 by David Hart KC

Begum v. Maran (UK) Ltd [2020] EWHC 1846 (QB)

On 30 March 2018, whilst working on the demolition of an oil tanker on the beach at Chittagong, Bangladesh, Mr Mollah fell to his death.

There is powerful evidence that essentially manual ship breaking of this sort is extremely unsafe and carries environmental risk given the asbestos and heavy metals aboard: see e.g. the work of NGO Shipbreaking Platform here. It does not take much more than a glance at the photographs to appreciate the problem. Conditions were grim; Mr Mollah was working at least 70 hours a week for long pay. Some 200,000 workers are thought to work under these conditions.

But this litigation is happening in the UK Courts. Mr Mollah’s widow did not even know the name of her Bangladeshi employer and she did not sue the owner of the “yard” there – in practice, the beach.

Supreme Court: Shamima Begum may be barred from UK

1 March 2021 by Marina Wheeler QC

Special Immigration Appeals Commission and Secretary of State for the Home Department v R (Begum) [2021] UKSC 7

Since 2019 when Shamima Begum was found in a camp in north Syria, her hopes of returning to the UK have ebbed and flowed (see here and here). Stripped of her British citizenship, she brought three sets of legal proceedings. Last week, after a ruling by the Supreme Court, her hopes receded once more. The Home Secretary was entitled to refuse her entry to the UK to pursue her appeal against the loss of citizenship, the Court ruled. So, Ms Begum’s appeal has been stayed, pending some change in her circumstances which will enable her to participate in a hearing – albeit from outside the UK.

The importance of the Judgment goes well beyond Ms Begum’s own circumstances.

It underlines an important constitutional principle about the separation of powers, at a time when the Government is carefully scrutinising such matters: the executive, not the judiciary, is the primary decision-maker when assessing risks to national security.

In failing to acknowledge this, said the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal erred when it ruled last summer that fairness required Ms Begum be permitted into the UK to pursue her citizenship appeal, notwithstanding the national security concerns.

Deport first, appeal second

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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Indefinite sentences, a chief coroner and abortion bias allegations – The Human Rights Roundup

23 September 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.

UPDATED: Thank you to all the those who pointed out my errors in this post – hopefully you will now find they are corrected.

In the news

A few fairly major issues to chew over this week: we have commentary on the controversial Sarah Catt abortion case, responses to the Strasbourg decision on indefinite prison sentences in the UK, and more additions to the debate about religion and human rights, among other things.

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Plan B – the Hawaii of the North Atlantic? Dr Richard Cornes

22 May 2015 by Guest Contributor

Constitutional Futures 2015 – 2025 – a vignette, and comment

 January 1, 2025

As the first day of 2025 dawns the people of the Kingdom of England wake looking forward to the arrival of their new passports, issued by the United States of… America. Governor Farage’s message is unusually sober, encouraging, almost apologetic:

While we had hoped to make our future with the Commonwealth, despite our best efforts, and the tireless advocacy of the Royal Family, we must acknowledge that our former friends are content with their lives and more local partners. We thank Her Majesty, and her family, for their service. We wish them well with their continued public service in Scotland, Canada and elsewhere.

While the bargain our NAFTA partners have struck is a bracing one, it is one which I believe we can live with, and indeed thrive under. As the fifty-first state, the first to join since Hawaii in 1959, we rejoin friends older than the New Zealanders, Australians, Canadians; we go back to our shared Mayflower roots.

President Clinton assures me that she expects Baroness Hale to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. I’m sure she will do great work weaving British principles into our new shared constitution.

With representatives in the House, and Senators Cameron and Umuna in the Senate, we can look forward to a prosperous future as a new and vital part of a nation we can claim have been with, in some ways, since it began.

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Who should appoint our top judges?

6 June 2011 by Adam Wagner

Updated | Recently, I have become a collector of visceral reactions by politicians to judgments. The Prime Minister David Cameron is leading the field, having been “uneasy“, “appalled” and even feeling “physically sick” over recent rulings. And this week the Scottish First Minister has appointed a panel of experts to see whether the UK’s Supreme Court’s “aggressive” interference with Scottish law can be stopped. But where is this criticism leading?

Leaving aside the political posturing and blame-shifting which unhelpfully characterises this debate, one interesting question which has emerged has been whether the current system of Supreme Court judicial appointments is fit for purpose.

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The Government in a bind?

18 December 2018 by Martin Downs

Martin Downs is a barrister at One Crown Office Row.

Once again, the holding of a referendum is being discussed as the potential solution to a Party and Parliamentary impasse. 

Theresa May’s dilemma is that she has reached an agreement with the European Union about the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union but it is reported that even the Cabinet do not believe it will command a majority of the House of Commons. 

A number of politicians and commentators have argued that a potential way through this thicket is to call a further referendum. 

This leaves open the question – what type of referendum should there be?

The Round Up: Immigration Appeals, Vaginal Mesh, and Farage and Defamation

24 April 2017 by Sarah Ewart

IN THE NEWS THIS WEEK

With election fever well and truly afflicting the exhausted electorate again, Gina Miller, of Article 50 fame, has launched a tactical voting initiative to back candidates who will “commit to keeping the options open for the British people.” The crowd-funding campaign, rousingly named “Do what’s best for Britain!”, reached and surpassed its £135k goal in just 24 hours. It’s not the first initiative of its kind: moreunited.co.uk contributed to the Lib Dem success in the Richmond Park by-election, and has doubled its crowd-funding target after raising more than £50k in the 48 hours since the announcement of the general election. Neither initiative is allied to a particular party: instead, they aim to support individual candidates sympathetic to their values.

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What would happen if the UK withdrew from the European Court of Human Rights?

3 March 2013 by Adam Wagner

Today’s Mail on Sunday reports that the Home Secretary is to announce “soon” that the Conservative Party’s election manifesto for 2015 will include a pledge to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights if the party obtains an overall majority.

I thought it would be useful to answer a few basic questions about what this would might mean for the UK. Bizarrely, the article appears alongside the Prime Minister’s opinion piece in the Sunday Telegraph promising that his party would not “veer right” and also “stick to the course we are on“. Talk about mixed messages. Anyway, let’s concentrate on Strasbourg. For a basic introduction to the Court and what it does, see my recent post: No, The Sun, the Human Rights Act is not the EU and David Hart QC’s A bluffer’s guide to human rights courts.

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Case comment: Human rights, proportionality and local authority evictions

5 November 2010 by Rosalind English

Updated | We posted earlier on the Supreme Court ruling in Manchester City Council (Respondent) v Pinnock (Appellant), that requires courts to be satisfied that any order for possession sought by local authorities must be “in accordance with the law”, and (ii) “necessary in a democratic society” – that is, that it should be proportionate in the full meaning of the word.

How far this takes us from the previous position, where the role of the county court was limited to conducting a conventional judicial review of the councils’ decision in such cases, remains to be seen.

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Breverse: Politically Problematic but Legally Possible, by Rose Slowe

14 June 2017 by Guest Contributor

On 29 March 2017, Theresa May’s Article 50 letter of notice was delivered to Donald Tusk, thereby formally triggering the Treaty-based process for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The question remains: is this trajectory irreversible, or can the UK rescind its notification?

While the legal arguments in favour of Article 50’s revocability have already been raised repeatedly in academic discourse, they now merit reconsideration. The results of the UK general election on 8 June have brought about a substantive change of circumstances, and the notion of Breverse no longer seems relegated to the realms of academic hypotheticals. This post explores the legal reality of revocability as a matter of UK constitutional, EU and international law, before considering how the current political situation interacts with this.

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Unelected, underqualified and frankly bonkers

9 May 2011 by Adam Wagner

A near-hysterical reaction has greeted some recent European court rulings. If you believed the coverage, you would think that unelected, underqualified and frankly bonkers judges are dictating our laws and making our Prime Minister physically ill.

With this week potentially heralding another hang-the-judges media storm over Max Mosley’s Strasbourg privacy case, it is a relief to read three sensible and balanced pieces on European courts this week, all of which highlights the courts’ shortcomings, but also the risks of a UK withdrawal.

First up is Charlemagne, the European columnist in The Economist, who finds a European court system which is “bewildering” – rightly wondering what the difference is between the European Council and the Council of Europe – and staffed by judges who “annoy most national politicians some of the time and infuriate some most of the time“.

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What lies beneath the Commission on a Bill of Rights report – Amy Williams

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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Human rights – a coat of many colours

24 March 2016 by Guest Contributor

“Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

Whatever your political colour;

Human rights should matter to you”

Some legal oratory flows into the profound, beautiful and inspiring. Most of the time when it comes to poetry – as this particularly appalling ditty is designed to demonstrate – we lawyers should stick to the day job.* 

This week human rights commentators celebrated both World Poetry Day and the launch of a new project on the conservative commitment to human rights.  Announcing a Commission made up of MPs and commentators – including Maria Miller MP, Dominic Grieve QC MP and Matthew D’Ancona – Bright Blue this week published a series of essays by Conservative leaders on a range of human rights threats; from the refugee crisis to the repeal of the Human Rights Act.

Bright Blue now joins the Labour Campaign for Human Rights in taking steps to take the current debate beyond the heat and light of party politics and into a greater conversation about how we protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our communities and about the UK’s place in the world.

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