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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: prisoners/page/36/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.
Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz have lost their High Court Judicial Review challenges to their extradition to the United States to face terrorism related charges. The court refused permission to apply for Judicial Review.
Two weeks ago the European Court of Human Rights refused the men’s requests to refer their extradition appeal to its Grand Chamber for another hearing. This meant that their case, which was decided in the Government’s favour in April (see our post) became final and there were in theory no remaining barriers to their extradition to the United States to face terrorism charges [Update, 7.10.12 – they are already in the United States, so no more legal shenanigans on these shores].
The men each brought different judicial review claims as a final challenge to their extradition, and those claims have – quite rightly – been dealt with rapidly by the High Court, which rejected the claims outright. As the court’s summary says, these proceedings are “the latest, and if we refuse permission, the last, in a lengthy process of appeals and applications that has continued for some eight years in the case of three and 14 years in the case of two.”
When dealt with at an oral hearing, refusals by the court of permission to apply for Judicial Review are not appealable. So pending any legal shenanigans (I can’t think of anything more they can do but as Julian Assange has taught us all, anything is possible), the (this time really) final barrier to extradition looks to have been removed.
The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that same-sex couples have a constitutionally protected right to marry.
In the history of American jurisprudence, there are a handful of cases which are so significant that they will be known to all US law students, much of the domestic population at large, and even large segments of the international community. Brown v Board of Education, which ended racial segregation in schools, is one example. Roe v Wade, which upheld the right of women to access abortion serves, is another. To that list may now be added the case of Obergefell v Hodges.
The High Court has ruled that two sisters must receive the MMR vaccine against their wishes and the wishes of their mother.
This was an application by the father for a declaration and a specific issue order concerning his daughters both receive the MMR vaccination. This was opposed by their mother.
Background
Following the breakdown of their parents’ marriage, the girls (aged 11 and 15 respectively) lived with their mother, and the father had contact every alternate weekend and half the school holidays. After publication of the now discredited paper published by Dr Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet connecting the MMR vaccine with autism, both parents agreed not to have a booster arranged for the older daughter (who had been inoculated against MMR at birth) and to forego a vaccination for the other daughter completely. Continue reading →
How the lockdown was reportedby the newspapersin March. Image: The Guardian
Emmet Coldrick is a barrister at Quadrant Chambers, London. The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of its author. Legal scrutiny of the provisions discussed in this piece is warranted but should not be taken to question the requirement to obey the regulations.
This first article will examine whether the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 fall within the Minister’s powers under section 45C(4)(d) of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to impose “a special restriction or requirement”.The second article will discuss the proper approach that the court should take where fundamental rights are in issue and argue that the Regulations were in fact ultra vires.
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 (“the Regulations”) contained the most draconian restrictions on the liberty of the general population ever imposed in England. They purported to create several new criminal offences (see reg. 9), including an offence of contravening a regulation that “… no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse” (see reg. 6) and an offence of contravening, without reasonable excuse, a regulation that (subject to limited exceptions) “no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people” (see reg. 7).
These extraordinary new laws were made without prior debate in Parliament. The published text of the Regulations records that they were made and came into force at 1.00 p.m. on 26th March 2020 and were laid before Parliament only thereafter.
On any view, a power to make – by the stroke of a minister’s pen – such new laws would be an awesome one. The Secretary of State claims that he had the power to make the Regulations under Part 2A of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 (“the 1984 Act”). That has been challenged by Mr Simon Dolan, who has brought judicial review proceedings contending that the Regulations were ultra vires.
Mr Dolan’s challenge is pending in the Court of Appeal. It was dismissed as unarguable by Lewis J at first instance (Dolan v Secretary of State for Health[2020] EWHC 1786 (Admin) (6th July 2020). But the Act presents difficulties in interpretation that were not grappled with in the judgment. I make a case below that the Regulations are ultra vires and that Mr Dolan’s appeal should be allowed.
Deb and Graham characterise my argument as follows: “the right to life under Article 2 is absolute and allows no exception; there is a negative obligation upon the UK not to take life; any euthanasia laws would necessarily involve the taking of life; therefore euthanasia laws would breach Article 2.” They then point out that this argument has been rejected in Mortier v Belgium.
The problem is that this completely mischaracterises my argument and as result Deb and Graham dedicate several paragraphs to attacking a strawman. My argument was much narrower than they claim. As I explained in my blog post the “negative obligation prohibits the State from conducting euthanasia and assisted suicide itself, even as part of a well-regulated scheme with appropriate safeguards. This means that, under the Convention, States may allow/tolerate private parties from conducting euthanasia/assisted suicide with appropriate safeguards but the State itself cannot conduct them.” (emphasis added)
R (on the application of Nicklinson and another) (Appellants) v Ministry of Justice (Respondent); R (on the application of AM) (AP) (Respondent) v The Director of Public Prosecutions (Appellant) [2014] UKSC 38 – read judgment
On appeal from [2013] EWCA Civ 961
The Supreme Court has declined to uphold a right to die a dignified death. However, a glimmer is is to be found in this judgment in that two out of the seven justices who concluded that it was for the United Kingdom to decide whether the current law on assisted suicide was incompatible with the right to privacy and dignity under Article 8, would have granted such a declaration in these proceedings., particularly where the means of death was one that could have been autonomously operated by the disabled appellant, leaving no doubt as to the voluntary and rational nature of his decision.
But the majority concluded that this was a matter for Parliament, not for the Courts.
The following summary is from the Supreme Court’s Press Summary
Bacground
These appeals arise from tragic facts and raise difficult and significant issues, namely whether the present state of the law of England and Wales relating to assisting suicide infringes the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”), and whether the code published by the Director of Public Prosecutions (“the DPP”) relating to prosecutions of those who are alleged to have assisted suicide is lawful. Continue reading →
District Judge Coleman, a judge sitting in the Westminster Magistrates Court, has issued a summons for Boris Johnson to appear in the Crown Court. He will face three charges alleging misconduct in a public office in a private prosecution brought by Marcus Ball. The offences alleged are indictable only which means that they can only be heard in the Crown Court.
Marcus Ball, a 29-year-old businessman who has brought the proceedings with the help of crowdfunding, alleges that the frontrunner for the Tory leadership lied about the amount of money which the UK sends to the EU both during the referendum campaign and during the general election campaign in 2017.
The controversial claim that £350m a week was sent by the UK to the EU and could better be spent on public services in the UK instead was a particularly eye catching aspect of the Leave campaign and attracted considerable criticism at the time and since. Some of that criticism particularly from the Institute of Fiscal Studies which branded the claim “absurd” and UK Statistics Authority whose chair described the claim as a misuse of statistics forms an important part of the case.
At issue in this procedural hearing was whether the court should issue a summons for Boris Johnson to attend court. He opposed the application and lost. He will be required to appear therefore be required to attend court for a preliminary hearing and the case will then be sent to the Crown Court.
A flash-back to 1980: the first series of the TV sitcom, ‘Yes Minister’ and a discussion between a Permanent Secretary (Sir Humphrey Appleby) and his Minister (the Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP):
Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it’s worked so well?
Hacker: That’s all ancient history, surely?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing — set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch… The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it’s just like old times.
Hacker: But surely we’re all committed to the European ideal?
Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.
Nearly 40 years later, as the Westminster Government seeks to extract the UK from the European project, chuckles are in short supply (in contrast to articles about Brexit). This piece considers the role of judicial review as the EU Withdrawal Bill is enacted, and after Brexit day has dawned – and the capacity of the Administrative Court to meet the increased demands that will predictably be made of it.
Codified constitutions are most commonly adopted following a major schism with the previous order. For example, following an armed uprising such as the American War of Independence or the French Revolution. The sweeping away of the old regime, of necessity, demands the creation of new fundamental principles and rules to organise the State. A codified constitution also presents an opportunity to set out the core values on which the nation can rally around. It is commonly asserted that the lack of such a critical break in UK history since the 17th century explains the absence of a codified constitution.
The debate over the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights is already mired with misunderstanding (see this and this), but amazingly Saturday’s Times (£) managed to up the stupid-quotient by another few notches.
The headline was “Ministers to block ‘right to marry’ in EU backlash“. Apparently the Government has “vowed to block a fresh push to introduce new EU human rights, such as the right to marry and the right to collective bargaining, into Britain“. And as the Times’ political editor Francis Elliot (not to be confused with the generally sound legal correspondent Frances Gibb) reported:
The charter enshrines a host of rights not found in other declarations, including personal, work and family relations. One of them is a proposed “right to marry and found a family”.
The only problem is that… the right to “marry and found a family” already exists in the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s in Article 12. It has been there since the UK signed up to the ECHR in 1953. Here it is:
The government’s proposals for reform of the law on defamation have been published. The bill seeks to address concerns that libel law has a chilling effect on freedom of speech, failing to strike the right balance between free speech and protection of reputation.
The pressure of the widely-supported reform campaign, inspired by recent libel actions stifling comment on issues of scientific and academic debate, has no doubt contributed to the manifesto commitment on the part of all three parties which the coalition is now following through. The consultation paper and draft bill has been met with muted enthusiasm, with critics claiming that the proposed statute at best codifies the common law, with all its confusions and complexities, and that the whole is at worst “too little, too late” to meet their reform demands.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular airport departure board of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Post by Sarina Kidd, edited and links compiled by Adam Wagner.
This week the Conservative Party Conference is likely to generate human rights headlines. Meanwhile, previous controversies still bubble away. Chris Grayling, taking a break from legal aid cuts, offered his opinion on the Europe debate. Meanwhile, others considered the role of transparency, demeanour, religious freedom and niqabs in the courts, and, with the proposed smoking ban in prisons, smokers may have found another reason not to break the law.
The proposition that burglars have rights incites debate, and sometimes anger, which is often directed towards the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention of Human Rights. However, on closer examination, the idea of “burglars’ rights” is not a new phenomenon in English law, and nor has it been imposed upon us by Strasbourg. The rights that burglars enjoy have long been part of the fabric of English common law.
There is nothing new about the idea that criminals in general, and burglars in particular, have forfeited their human rights by virtue of their criminality.
As Michael Cholbi of the University of New York has described in his article discussing felon disenfranchisement in the United States, “A Felon’s Right to Vote”, the strong conviction held by some that criminals should not enjoy the benefit of human rights is founded upon a basic intuition that “criminal acts alter the moral status of wrongdoers, permitting us to do to them what is otherwise unjust”. Essentially, having demonstrated an unwillingness to regulate their own conduct, criminals cease to be an object of moral concern. Continue reading →
Smith v Trafford Housing Trust [2012] EWHC 3221 (Ch) – read judgment
Turner v East Midlands Trains [2012] EWCA Civ 1470 – read judgment
Two employment cases, about Facebook and train tickets respectively, indicate the difficulties of deciding where human rights may or may not be raised in disputes between private parties – neither defendant in these cases was a public authority.
It is perfectly clear that where there is a statutory provision under attack, Section 3 of the Human Rights Act mandates the “reading down” of its wording to conform to Convention rights even though there is no “public authority” amongst the parties to the litigation. The Turner case below illustrates this particular aspect of the “horizontal” effect of the HRA in disputes between private parties.
It is clear from the many tributes to her that Ms Colvin was an extraordinary person: a woman of verve, replete with humanity, she was fearless in the face of carefully assessed and weighed risk. In 2001 after losing an eye in a grenade attack by a Sri Lankan government soldier whilst reporting on the Tamil Tigers, she wrote:
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Updated | Abu Hamza and others -v- Home Secretary – Read official summary
A flash-back to 1980: the first series of the TV sitcom, ‘Yes Minister’ and a discussion between a Permanent Secretary (Sir Humphrey Appleby) and his Minister (the Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP):
The debate over the European Union’s 
The government’s proposals 
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular airport departure board of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
News of the 
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