Search Results for: prisoner voting/page/28/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.
20 June 2011 by Rosalind English
In her lecture at Gresham College last week Baroness Hale speculated how high the human rights tree might grow before it presents a threat to the surrounding constitutional ecosystem. Our words, not hers, but she preferred the arboreal image to the more established but inherently nonsensical notion of a “living instrument” as an expression of the Convention’s adaptability over time. This tree, she suggested, should not be allowed to transmogrify in to a gigantic beanstalk, crashing through the sky, inspiring false dreams and unrealisable ambitions.
The seeds of this tree – or treacherous beanstalk, whichever way one prefers to look at it – were sown in the seventies when the Strasbourg Court chose a “purposive” rather than a literal construction of the language used in the Convention. This means that judges enforcing the norms of the Convention need not confine themselves to the terms as stated or clearly implicit in the written text, nor to the purpose that might be derived from the preparatory materials and the historical context. Thus in the landmark case of Golder v United Kingdom, the Court ruled that Article 6 not only conferred an explicit right to a fair trial but implied that citizens should be granted the right of access to justice, something that could not be discovered within the four corners of the Convention as a document.
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31 August 2010 by Adam Wagner
A new report from the think-tank Civitas argues that increasing community sentences and cutting prison numbers will lead to more crime and add to costs too.
This is contrary to the the view of the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, who has argued recently that there is no link between the rising level of imprisonment and falling crime.
The report, Prison, Community Sentencing and Crime, is by Ken Pease, a professor at the Manchester Business School and a former Home Office criminologist. It does not present any significant new research; rather, it seeks to put the other side of the debate on prison numbers, in light of the “apparently concerted attempt to justify an increasing use of community sanctions in place of custody for convicted criminals”.
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6 March 2012 by hrupdateadmin
This is the first in a series of posts analysing the UK’s draft “Brighton Declaration” on European Court of Human Rights reform.
Much of the criticism directed toward the European Court of Human Rights over the last year or so, in this country at least, has been that it is too ready to overrule decisions made by the competent United Kingdom national authorities. It is said that British courts have already addressed the relevant human rights arguments under the Human Rights Act, so it is quite wrong that Strasbourg should now ‘overrule’ them.
A recent high profile example, apparently, was Strasbourg’s finding of a violation of the Convention in the Abu Qatada case, despite the House of Lords’ earlier ruling, holding no violation of the ECHR. (See, for example, the Home Secretary’s expressions of frustration about this).
The leaked (British) draft of the Brighton Declaration (for commentary, see here, here and here) concerning the on-going reform of the ECHR is apparently seeking to rebalance matters in this regard, and perhaps put the Strasbourg Court in its place.
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14 April 2011 by Catriona Murdoch
As we posted earlier this week, US State department has released its 35th annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, including an in-depth analysis of human rights in the UK.
The report overall gives a balanced view of the Human Rights Practices in the UK, with some criticism but also some praise. It touches upon many of the issues reported in the UK Human Rights Blog but also misses some important topics that have emerged since the last annual country report.
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4 April 2011 by Graeme Hall
In an interesting post, Aidan O’Neill QC concludes that the European Court of Human Rights is “in danger of imminent collapse” due to its backlog of 140,000 applications with around 1,600 arriving every month; a conclusion compounded by inherent delays. He suggests that the way to draw back Strasbourg from the brink of judicial Armageddon is to abolish the individual right to petition Strasbourg and to introduce a referral system whereby national courts request Strasbourg’s opinion on human rights issues, akin to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
by Graeme Hall
I must disagree. Strasbourg’s jurisdiction spreads across 47 contracting States, ranging from diverse populations such as Liechtenstein and Malta to Russia and Turkey. In turn, the Court is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights for over 800,000,000 individuals. The 61,300 valid applications which Strasbourg received in 2010 represent applications from 0.0077 per cent of the population to which the Convention applies. Given the importance of the Convention to the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms, I find it surprising that Strasbourg does not receive more applications.
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1 October 2014 by Guest Contributor
In recent years, a constant feature of debate about the future of the European Court of Human Rights has been the backlog of applications that threatens to engulf it. At its height, in September 2011, this backlog reached the dizzying figure of more than 160,000.
The accumulation of applications has been the basis of the argument both by politicians (such as David Cameron) and figures formerly associated with the Court (such as Luzius Wildhaber) that the Strasbourg system should be fundamentally reformed so that it would deliver far fewer judgments relating only to large-scale violations, structural problems, or important questions of the interpretation and application of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Such reform would mean drastically curtailing the right of individual petition, which for decades has been the cornerstone of the Convention system (and of other regional human rights mechanisms that have emulated the ECHR model). Yet if the backlog was to be significantly reduced – or eliminated – the foundation of the argument that the Court requires root-and-ranch reform to avoid collapse would, by the same token, disappear. Figures presented last week by the Registrar of the Court, Erik Fribergh, suggest that this scenario is now not only possible, but likely.
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4 December 2014 by Guest Contributor
The parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights this week published a report of its inquiry into whether the UK should ratify Protocol 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As the report states, Protocol 15 is the culmination of the UK Government’s contribution to the process of reform of the European Court of Human Rights, which was the UK’s top priority during its Chairmanship of the inter-governmental arm of the Council of Europe, the Committee of Ministers, in the first half of 2012.
The JCHR identifies as the most significant aspect of Protocol 15 the addition to the Preamble of the Convention of an express reference to the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ and the doctrine of ‘the margin of appreciation’. The Committee welcomes this amendment and recommends that the UK should ratify the Protocol – but only after it has been debated in both Houses as a means of raising members’ awareness of its significance.
This post focuses on the implications of Protocol 15 for the UK’s increasingly turbulent relationship with the Convention system, and for the wider debate about the purported ‘democratic deficit’ created by supranational judicial supervision of domestic democratically-accountable authority.
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25 November 2019 by Rosalind English
In the news
With an election on
the horizon, a coalition of 29 women and human rights organisation has published
a manifesto for women and girls. Their stated goals are to “end violence
against women and girls”; “secure women’s equal representation in politics”; “promote
equality in the workplace and in the home”; “invest in public services”; and “lift
women and children out of poverty”. To
achieve these goals, they propose measures including a new ‘Violence Against
Women and Girls’ bill to lay before Parliament; funding for high-quality sex
and relationships education; improvements to the criminal justice system
regarding allegations of rape and sexual assault; equal pay; increased maternity
pay and maternity allowances; an end to pregnancy discrimination; and a strengthening
of the law on sexual harassment at work, creating a duty on employers to
prevent harassment from occurring. The manifesto is available here.
The backlash
against internet intermediaries and ‘surveillance capitalism’ continues this
week. Amnesty International have released a report entitled ‘Surveillance Giants’,
which analyses in detail the human rights threats posed by Facebook, Google,
and other technology corporations. The report is available here. Meanwhile,
in the courts, Singh LJ granted Ed Bridges permission to appeal the facial
recognition judicial review which he lost in September, noting that Mr Bridges’
appeal had a reasonable prospect of success.
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13 September 2011 by Melina Padron
Welcome back to the human rights roundup, a regular bulletin of all the law we haven’t quite managed to feature in full blog posts. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
by Melinda Padron
In the news:
Remembering 9/11, 10 years on
Last week the Law and Lawyers blog posted a retrospective of 9/11 and the consequent events of legal significance that impacted, and continue to impact, on the UK. The Human Rights in Ireland blog discussed the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures legislation in the UK, whilst Adam Wagner took the unusual step of sharing his personal reflections on 9/11. Dapo Akande links his post on the EJIL Talk blog to an interview in a BBC Radio programme where he discussed, amongst other things, whether the Geneva Conventions apply to the so called “war on terror”.
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9 November 2017 by Matthew Hill
Independence and public inquiries – why you need it and how you can lose it
There is a scene in “Yes Minister” in which the beleaguered Jim Hacker is contemplating a public inquiry into the latest failing of his department. He warily suggests to his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, that perhaps the judge chairing the inquiry could be leant on to come up with a favourable outcome. Sir Humphrey is outraged at this violation of the separation of powers. Surely the Minister wasn’t serious? After all, wouldn’t it be better to appoint a judge who didn’t need to be leant on in the first place?
Jim Duffy’s recent post on the Contaminated Blood Inquiry – and the importance of an inquiry being independent and being seen to be independent – brought this encounter to mind. The ever more frequent calls for a ‘judge-led inquiry’ must be a source of both pride and concern to the judiciary. Pride as ‘judge-led’ is a synonym for a forensic, thorough and above all independent tribunal to assess the matter in question. We will come to the concern later.
Times have changed since the careers of Hacker and Sir Humphrey. The Inquiries Act 2005 contains provisions intended to secure and display the suitability and impartiality of those charged with conducting a statutory inquiry (see in particular s.8 and 9). When it comes to appointing a judge, the Act provides that the minister must consult with the Lord Chief Justice or another relevant senior member of the judiciary (s.10). Sir Humphrey would be disappointed.
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9 November 2010 by Guest Contributor
The following is a guest post by Tom Blackmore, the grandson of David Maxwell Fyfe, a politician, lawyer and judge who was instrumental in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights, which has just celebrated its 60th anniversary (see our post). For those who argue that human rights are an invention of continental Europe, this article should provide food for thought:
In 1914 Rupert Brooke wrote:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
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26 February 2018 by Dominic Ruck Keene
In Razumas v Ministry of Justice [2018] EHWC 215 a prisoner who had made a claim for clinical negligence against the Ministry of Justice, rather than against the specific health care provider, had his claim dismissed.
In a judgment that sheds light on the current approach to both vicarious liability and non-delegable duties of care, Cockerill J held that: (1) the MOJ had not breached its limited direct duty of care, (2) did not owe a non-delegable duty of care and (3) was not vicariously liable.
The Claimant alleged that there was a negligent failure to diagnose and treat a soft tissue sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, which developed in his calf muscle in 2010. He has since had to undergo a left leg amputation above the knee and also surgery for metastatic disease in his left shoulder muscle. It is estimated that there is a 70% chance that he will develop further metastases in the future. His life expectancy has been sharply reduced.
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28 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Sutyagin
I attended a talk this morning given by Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear scientist who was detained for 11 years on charges of treason. He was released in July as part of the high-profile spy-swap with the United States.
Hearing Sutyagin’s description of the Russian justice system, as well as the “gulag” he was sent to for over a decade, brings into focus the enormous difference between legal systems within Europe. In the UK we can confidently expect that courts and judges will uphold the rule of law and act with impartiality. Whilst there are notable exceptions, our legal system has checks and balances in order that poor decisions can be weeded out. That system is imperfect but at least it is predictable and, on the whole, fair.
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14 April 2014 by Rosalind English
Smith, R (on the application of v Secretary of State for Justice and G4S UK Ltd [2014] EWCA Civ 380 – read judgment
This case raises the question of whether it is a breach of a non-smoking prisoner’s Convention right to respect for his private life and to equality of access to such rights (ECHR Articles 8 and 14) to compel him to share a cell with a smoker.
The appellant, a convicted sex offender serving a long sentence, was required between 21st and 28th March 2012 to share a cell with a fellow prisoner who was a smoker. It was known to the prison authorities that the appellant was a non-smoker, and the requirement to share with a smoker was contrary to his wishes. The sharing complained of ended when the appellant was transferred to another prison on 28th March 2012.
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30 March 2012 by Isabel McArdle
Bourgass and others v Secretary of State for Justice [2012] EWCA Civ 376 Read decision
The ability to interact with other prisoners is a major part of prison life, and not one many prisoners would give up willingly. But there are circumstances where prisoners have to be segregated from the rest of the prison population, such as where they are posing a violent threat to another prisoner or planning an escape. The Court of Appeal has recently looked into the question of how decisions to segregate are made, including the initial decision, the review of the decision and ultimately judicial review, in a human rights context.
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In her lecture at Gresham College last week Baroness Hale speculated how high the human rights tree might grow before it presents a threat to the surrounding constitutional ecosystem. Our words, not hers, but she preferred the arboreal image to the more established but inherently nonsensical notion of a “living instrument” as an expression of the Convention’s adaptability over time. This tree, she suggested, should not be allowed to transmogrify in to a gigantic beanstalk, crashing through the sky, inspiring false dreams and unrealisable ambitions.
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