Search Results for: prisoners/page/35/[2001] EWCA Civ 1546
19 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
A review of the UK’s extradition laws by a former Court of Appeal judge has found that existing arrangements between the UK and USA are balanced but the Home Secretary’s discretion to intervene in human rights cases should be removed.
The review by Sir Scott Baker was commissioned shortly after the Coalition Government came to power, fulfilling the pledge in its programme for government to ”review the operation of the Extradition Act – and the US/UK extradition treaty – to make sure it is even-handed”. In my September 2010 post I said that the review marked a victory for campaigners against certain extradition agreements, most notably the supporters of alleged Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon (pictured).
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7 April 2017 by Guest Contributor
More substantive than the 137 word EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 (‘Notification Act’), which was passed by Parliament on 13 March, the Prime Minister’s 6 page letter of notice, issued under Article 50 TEU, is lacking in one crucial respect. This post asserts that, as a matter of UK constitutional law and in accordance with the EU Treaties as well as customary international law, conditionality should be inferred into this notice. Such conditionality manifests in the requirement of domestic Parliamentary approval at the end of the Article 50 negotiation process.
On Wednesday 29 March, shortly after the UK’s Article 50 notice had been delivered to Donald Tusk, Theresa May told the House of Commons that it was a ‘historic moment from which there can be no turning back’.
That premise is disputed. As a matter of law, it is far from certain that notice issued under Article 50(2) is indeed irrevocable. Further, there are compelling legal arguments as to why such notice can be unilaterally withdrawn once given. The arguments in favour of revocability are difficult to dispute, finding their basis in the UK constitution, EU Treaties and international law.
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2 February 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The Human Rights Lawyers’ Association, of which I am a committee member, is recruiting a part-time administrator.
Full details of the post, which is for up to 10 hours per week and offers remuneration of £10,000 inclusive of VAT, can be found after the page break.
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16 September 2011 by David Hart KC
In the UK and EU, there are a lot of statutes and rules about climate change, and relatively little strategic litigation. Hop over the Pond, and we see exactly the reverse, a reflection of different political dynamics with the hostility of the US Congress to climate change legislation.
It is interesting to look at some of the US cases, not only because they lock horns with one of the big issues of our time, but also because they reflect a common problem the courts face in deciding their role when confronted with science which is, or is said to be, controversial.
We should start with the groundbreaking decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (549 U.S. 497 (2007)). The US Supreme Court held that the US Environmental Protection Agency had a duty to use its existing powers under the Clean Air Act and assess whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from vehicles were a danger to the environment and, if that was the case, to regulate them. In the litigation, and contrary to the opinion of two of its previous general counsels, it had denied that it was under a duty to do so. This judgment was a highly important ruling, as it meant that no new legislation was necessary to get the climate change ball rolling. Thereafter the EPA turned to how it should regulate GHG emissions, as we shall see.
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8 January 2013 by Adam Wagner
With apologies for the boring title, here are three quick things.
First, the Government’s consultation on Judicial Review changes ends on 24 January 2013, so you have just over two weeks to respond. As with some previous consultations, I will be collating responses on the blog so please feel free to email them to me. My most recent thoughts are here: Quicker, costlier and less appealing: plans for Judicial Review reform revealed
Secondly, the European Court of Human Rights is to rule next Tuesday 15 January on four key cases involving discrimination and religious rights. The full background is here: Religious freedom in UK to be considered by Strasbourg Court and you can watch the entire hearing here. We will, of course, be covering the judgment in full.
Thirdly, in November 1 Crown Office Row hosted a mock trial on the topic of public inquiries and inquests at which a number of 1COR barristers, including me, spoke. The podcast of the event is now online and you find it here and also below the page break. You can also download the handout, which includes a number of very useful skeleton arguments for the mock trial, here.
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1 March 2013 by Adam Wagner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaWgRw78Y1M
The Justice and Security Bill, which will allow secret ‘closed material’ hearings to take place in civil trials, has been quietly (almost too quietly) making its way through Parliament. The Bill will allow judges to exclude lawyers, press, the public and even litigants in their own cases from civil hearings which involve national security.
Kafkaesque is a term used in almost every critical article about law ever written. But I have read The Trial (I really have!), and the effect of these proposals is not too far from that.
The key development is that many of the amendments forced through in the House of Lords under the leadership of Lord Pannick have been reversed by the Government. We have a full update coming later on the progress of the Bill, but I thought that in the mean time I would highlight a few up to date resources and developments:
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3 August 2022 by Alasdair Henderson
We do not usually cover first-instance employment tribunal judgments on this blog, but two cases handed down in the last three weeks – Forstater v. CGD Europe and Bailey v. Stonewall Equality Ltd and Garden Court Chambers – have attracted so much attention that we feel an exception must be made. Both cases involved women with ‘gender critical’ beliefs who faced hostility in their workplaces after expressing them. Both succeeded in their claims of direct discrimination and victimisation on grounds of belief under the Equality Act 2010. Although neither of the cases sets a binding precedent for other courts or tribunals, they contain interesting legal analysis and comment about the importance of freedom of expression and freedom of belief in the context of work which is of wider significance.
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25 February 2018 by Martin Downs
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland will sit this week to consider an appeal against the refusal of the High Court to give recognition to the marriage of a gay man from Northern Ireland who had married his husband in London under the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. The original decision by Mr Justice O’Hara was published last August and reported as Re X [2017] NIFam 12. Under the terms of the 2013 Act, same sex marriage in England and Wales is treated for the purposes of the law of Northern Ireland as a civil partnership (in accordance with the Civil Partnership Act 2004). The Petitioner wants recognition of his marriage as such and argues that the denial of recognition is a breach of his Convention Rights.
When civil partnerships were being introduced for England, Wales and Scotland, Northern Ireland was going through one of its periods of direct rule from London. The UK government embarked upon a lightning consultation exercise and subsequently decided to include Northern Ireland in what came to be the Civil Partnership Act 2004. That meant that civil partnership was a UK wide arrangement. In fact, by a quirk of the law, the first civil partnership ceremony in the UK took place in Belfast, between Shannon Sickles and Grainne Close (who have also been refused a High Court Declaration that they can get married in the North).
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28 November 2022 by Matthew Johnson
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has made headline news over the past few months. Attention firstly focused on whether it would happen at all. Once the acquisition was completed, public opinion turned to Musk’s plans for the platform: to make Twitter a bastion of free speech in opposition to an age of censorship. As these reforms have begun to unfold, news outlets have looked at the treatment of staff during this period of ‘transition’.
What is interesting, however, is that these episodes are not taking place in a contextual vacuum. At the same time that Musk brags that “the bird is freed”, the Online Safety Bill passes through Parliament with an aim to control information on social media platforms. The Bill sets out to regulate what Musk’s Twitter sets out to deregulate.
Does the Bill salt the bird’s tail, caging what has only just been freed? Where should the balance be struck between social media freedom and social media protection?
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1 December 2017 by David Hart KC
Fishermen & Friends of the Sea v. The Minister of Planning, Housing and the Environment (Trinidad and Tobago) [2017] UKPC 37, 27 November 2017 – read judgment
A vignette of where
(1) Trinidad and Tobago is,
(2) the EU/UK is,
(3) where Michael Gove may wish us to be post-Brexit,
on the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP), a key environmental principle.
As we shall see, in legal terms, the expansiveness of (1) and (2) contrasts with the potential parsimony of (3).
Now (3) may be better than nothing, as per the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, i.e, no enforceable environmental principles at all. But that does not mean we should not aspire for more. After all, as we shall see, the PPP is hardly a racy new entrant into environmental law.
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9 January 2013 by Rosalind English
Schwartz and another v Insogna and another, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – read judgment
Never doubt the authority of the law, particularly in the US, where a six year battle triggered by a middle finger gesture continues to rage in the New York courts.
In May 2006, Mr. Swartz was a passenger in a car in a rural part of upstate New York when he spotted a police car that was using a radar speed-tracking device. The driver, a Vietnam veteran and retired airline pilot, acted on instinct to show his displeasure: he extended his right arm outside the passenger’s side window, and then further extended his middle finger over the car’s roof. As the New York Times reports
The reaction was swift. The officer followed the car; words were exchanged; backups were called; and Mr. Swartz was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.
Mr Schwartz maintained that his gesture was provoked by his anger that the local police were spending their time running a speed trap instead of patrolling and solving crimes.
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15 July 2015 by David Hart KC
Quite a lot has happened in the 6 months since my post here on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). TTIP is a proposed trade agreement between the US and the EU, with negotiations on the substantive issues between the EU and the US underway in Brussels at the moment.
The proposed treaty may have significant effects on EU regulation, but let’s concentrate on whether TTIP should contain specific provisions enabling investors to sue governments.
The ground for action would be governmental “expropriation” of investments – and that may mean anything from telling a cigarette manufacturer that he must have to change what his packets look like, (with consequential loss of profits), to imposing new environmental standards on a power generating plant.
This mechanism is known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement or ISDS. Our government seems astonishingly sanguine about this, on the basis that it has not yet been sued successfully under existing bilateral treaties with similar provisions. This does not seem to be a very profoundly thought-through position to adopt, if the proposed system has its problems – which it plainly does, when one compares it with traditional claims in the courts. Put simply, why wave it on?
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16 February 2015 by Guest Contributor
It has long been recognised that enabling healthcare professionals to speak up about concerns at work is a key element of the promotion of patient safety. The Final Report of the Freedom to Speak Up review of whistleblowing processes in the NHS was published on 11 February 2015.
Sir Robert Francis recommends the implementation of twenty “Principles” and “Actions” by organisations which provide NHS healthcare and by professional and systems regulators. These measures are to address “an urgent need for system wide action,” in spite of some positive developments in the handling of whistleblowing processes since the February 2013 report of the public inquiry into the failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
The Principles and Actions appear under five “overarching themes” which are addressed at chapters 5-9 of the 222 page report, each chapter describing the Principles that should be followed to bring about the change required, and the Actions which follow from each. Annex A to the report is a summary of good practice which cross refers to the Principles.
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31 July 2017 by David Hart KC
Review of Fixed Recoverable Costs: Supplemental Report, 31 July 2017 – here
Jackson LJ is still toiling away at costs issues some 8 years after his main report. The original report changed the whole way in which the civil courts go about working how much, if anything, is due from one side to another at the end of a case – budgets being one key element. The main part of this new report concerns extending fixed costs further.
This post is about something different, judicial review. Rather different factors may come into play when you are challenging public authorities. You may have a direct financial or other interest in the outcome, or you may just think that the law needs properly enforcing against those authorities. It does not follow that the winner should recover costs on the same rules as elsewhere in the civil system. And Jackson LJ returns to the question of costs in this context in Chapter 10 of his report.
Since 2013, things have been different in the area of environmental judicial reviews. With substantial prods from the EU, things are now better off for claimants, though recent reforms have sought to put further obstacles in the way of claimants: see my post here.
So it is refreshing to read something from a very senior judge which recognises the true value of judicial review as a whole and why the costs rules need adjusting in this area for the benefit of claimants.
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29 July 2011 by Adam Wagner
Her Majesty’s Attorney-General Claimant – and – (1) MGN Limited Defendants (2) News Group Newspapers Limited – Read judgment
The High Court has found that the Daily Mirror and The Sun were in breach of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (1981 Act) in relation to their reporting of the Jo Yeates murder case. The court was strongly critical of the “vilification” of a man who was arrested but quickly released without charge.
The proceedings were in relation to Christopher Jefferies, a school teacher who was arrested early on in the investigation. The court fined the Daily Mirror £50,000 and The Sun £18,000.
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