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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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10 December 2010 by Guest Contributor
Last night was the Justice Human Rights Awards 2010 ceremony. Readers of this blog will know that we were one of three organisations shortlisted for the Human Rights Awards.
We didn’t win! But we did lose out to an excellent organisation: Bail for Immigration Detainees, an independent charity which challenges immigration detention in the UK, working with asylum seekers and migrants in removal centres and prisons to secure their release from detention.
The Human Rights Awards have been held each December since 2001 to commemorate Human Rights Day, which is today.
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4 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Next week will mark the 10th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Despite the intervening decade, the states threatened by terrorism are still puzzling out the right balance between the powers of security services and the rights of suspected terrorists to due process.
Although terrorism is now mercifully low on the public agenda, the effects of 9/11 are still being felt across the legal system. The United Kingdom is soon to open an independent inquiry into the improper treatment of detainees by security services following the terrorist attacks. As things stand, the UK’s major human rights groups are boycotting the inquiry for fear that the government will be able to suppress evidence.
The intelligence services have now tightened up their policy towards interviewing detainees overseas, but one policy which is still in flux is the control order regime, soon to be succeeded by Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs).
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20 May 2012 by Rachit Buch
As expected, last week’s Queen’s Speech included plans to reform libel law. This follows a concerted campaign to improve protection of the right to free expression and bring greater clarity to England’s libel law. But the question for those who wanted to see reform, now the Defamation Bill has been published, is whether the reforms proposed will be the right ones.
The media law blog, Inforrm, published this summary of the Bill, which takes a detailed look at the main clauses. Law blog Jack of Kent also has a libel reform resource page here. Among others, the Bill would make the following major changes:
- Create a test of “serious harm” for statements to be considered defamatory.
- Abolish the common law defences of fair comment, justification and Reynolds privilege, and place them on a statutory footing.
- Create a new statutory privilege for peer-reviewed scientific and academic publications and provide greater protection to online entities.
- Amend the existing law of qualified privilege to include reports of scientific conferences and press conferences.
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25 November 2020 by David Hart KC
R (o.t.a of Aviva & Swiss Re) v. Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2020] EWHC 3118 (Admin)
At first sight, a rather abstruse dispute, but the 63 page judgment of Henshaw J gives rise to a host of important and difficult human rights points. But his central conclusion is that a statute which was not challengeable at the time of its enactment became so, because of the subsequent evolution of the law, principally common law, to the detriment of insurers.
Sounds mildly counter-intuitive? Not, I think, so, when the story has unfolded.
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26 October 2015 by Rosalind English
Fountain pen on a blank page open on a diary book…
Tickle v Council of the Borough of North Tyneside and others [2015] EWHC 2991 (Fam) (19 October 2015) – read judgment
Before the court were cross applications by a journalist and the local authority regarding care proceedings which the former wished to report. The individual in question was a mother (representing herself in these proceedings) who had had a number of children taken into care in the past. Her life had been “blighted” historically by serious mental health problems which have at times made it unsafe for her to care for her children. At the time of this application, it seemed, those times appeared to be behind her. Be that as it may, she and her children had been through the care system on a number of occasions.
She had shared this experience on social media sites, and had described, in particular, how she fought for her youngest child (a child who was removed at birth) and how she eventually succeeded in having that child live with her. Bodey J, who had read some of her online articles, found them “balanced and responsible”.
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2 April 2010 by Adam Wagner
Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, has used the annual Judicial Studies Board (JSB) lecture to complain that the English courts were being influenced too heavily by judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
This is becoming something of a tradition at the annual JSB lecture. Lord Hoffman used the same platform last year (read lecture here) to criticise the ECtHR, saying it had been “unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules on Member States.”
In this year’s lecture, Lord Judge suggested that “statute ensures that the final word does not rest with Strasbourg, but with our Supreme Court” and that the Luxembourg-based ECtHR was encroaching on the legal territory of its Strasbourg cousin, the European Court of Justice.
The full lecture can be found here, or you can read more of the address after the page break below:
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8 May 2017 by Thomas Beamont
A new report has argued that the practice of turning back asylum seeker boats at sea is illegal under international law, and does not deter others from making the journey.
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22 June 2010 by Adam Wagner
George Osborne is to announce the Government’s emergency budget today. Although the Government has been seeking to emphasise measures which will soften the blow to the poor, the fact remains that these are the biggest cuts in decades and that many will end up worse off, particularly if wages decrease and unemployment increases.
Update: The full budget can be downloaded here. The section on benefits starts at page 33.
The Government is to cut benefits by £11bn by 2014-15. The huge cost of benefits (“spending on social security and tax credits has increased by 45 per cent, around £60 billion, in real terms over the past 10 years.), the Chancellor told Parliament, were one of the reasons why there isn’t any more money in the Government coffers. The Health in Pregnancy grant will be abolished from 2011 and Sure Start will be limited. Child Benefit is to be frozen for the next three years. Disability Living Allowance will be restricted by a new medical check from 2013. The Chancellor has said he will “increase the incentives to work” and will reassess benefits on the basis of the Consumer Price Index rather than the Retail Price Index. Housing benefit will be limited significantly and maximum limits on what can be claimed are to be introduced for the first time.
Rosalind English posted two weeks ago on whether budget cuts will lead to revised calls for “socio-economic” human rights; a concept which is as old as the European Convention on Human Rights and just as controversial. We will now revisit that post.
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10 November 2025 by Guest Contributor
By Emily Higlett
Introduction
The Court of Appeal in Re D has overturned final care and placement orders made at an Issues Resolution Hearing (“IRH”), stating that judges must give clear, reasoned findings on the threshold criteria under section 31(2) Children Act 1989 (“CA 1989”), even where proceedings are uncontested or parents are absent.
In delivering the judgment, Cobb LJ, with whom Baker LJ and Miles LJ agreed, criticised the short form reasoning used by the Family Court and stressed the need for transparent judicial decision-making when the State intervenes in family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”).
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20 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Recent weeks have seen some interesting developments in the debate over freedom of expression of the press.
Last week saw a decision of Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Sanoma Uitgevers B.V. v. the Netherlands. The case related to the protection of journalistic sources, and has been described as a “victory for press freedom”.
The court held that an order for the compulsory surrender of journalistic material which contained information capable of identifying journalistic sources requires legal procedural safeguards commensurate with the importance of the principle at stake. The Dutch prosecutors in the case, which had ordered the production of a CD-ROM containing potentially incriminating photographs of participants in an illegal race, had therefore breached Article 10 (freedom of expression).
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17 November 2010 by Guest Contributor
We are delighted to announce that the UK Human Rights Blog by 1 Crown Office Row chambers has been shortlisted for the JUSTICE Human Rights Award 2010.
Also shortlisted are Reprieve and Bail for Immigration Detainees. The Human Rights Awards have been held each December since 2001 to commemorate Human Rights Day. As described by JUSTICE, the awards aim to recognise and encourage individuals and organisations whose work is dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of others. Last year’s winner was the Gurkhas Justice Campaign. A full list of previous winners can be found here.
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22 June 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Yesterday saw the release of the Government’s flagship justice bill, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.
There is a lot in the bill. In terms of its long term effect on the justice system, the most important parts relate to legal aid and litigation funding; that is, the options available to claimants to fund their cases – for example, no-win-no-fee arrangements or government funding. The reforms have been long-heralded, and the government has now responded to its consultations on both (see here for legal aid and here for litigation funding).
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12 September 2012 by Adam Wagner
Almost ten years after the death of Rachel Corrie on 16 March 2003, her case still raises troubling questions. How was a 23-year-old protester killed by an Israeli military bulldozer? Did the driver do it deliberately, as the family have claimed? Were the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) responsible in some other way?
Those questions were all in play in a civil negligence claim brought against the Israeli state by Corrie’s family, who claimed $1 in damages. Having exhausted other avenues, the family were looking for answers, not a pay out. The Haifa District Court examined the issues over 15 days of oral testimony, and two weeks ago Judge Oded Gershon released a 73-page ruling (Hebrew) as well as a detailed summary of the Judgment (English).
I was particularly interested in the judgment as a significant proportion of my work recently has involved public inquiries into allegations against the British Armed Forces over events which happened in Iraq in 2003/4. Unfortunately, the reporting of the ruling has been fairly poor. The Guardian published eight articles and a cartoon about the ruling (by comparison, the appointment of a new Justice Secretary generated four). But despite the sheer volume of commentary, I had no sense from reading the articles that the writers had attended the oral hearings, read the judgment (which is long and in Hebrew) or even consider the court’s English summary. The Guardian’s legal section is very good so it is disappointing that the legal interest of the story was largely ignored.
With this in mind, I thought I would post a summary of the judgment and brief discussion of how an equivalent claim would work in the UK.
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18 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
By all accounts, it has been a gloomy year for access to justice. The legal aid budget is to be reduced by £350m and state assistance has effectively disappeared in non-criminal cases. The overall justice budget, which is already low by international standards, is to be cut by a further 23%. But believe it or not, there may be reasons to be cheerful.
In the virtual world, legal blogs are becoming an established voice in the UK legal community and the flourishing blogosphere has given the public a lively, accessible and most importantly free new way of engaging with the law. With legal aid becoming scarcer and Citizens Advice Bureaus losing their funding, free information services such can be the last resort for those who seek legal help without having to pay for a lawyer.
But none of these services would exist without their hidden backbone: BAILII. To that end, when Legal Week published its excellent review of legal blogging last month, the failure to mention BAILII caused a min-revolution from a gaggle of legal bloggers in the comments section.
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