Search Results for: prisoners/page/41/[2001] EWCA Civ 1546
1 July 2024 by Emilia Cieslak
In UK news
Julian Assange has been released from HM Prison Belmarsh after accepting a plea deal with American prosecutors. Assange pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, for communicating with whistleblower Chelsea Manning and receiving and publishing classified information regarding Guantanamo Bay, the Afghan and Iraq war, and US diplomatic cables. After being released from Belmarsh, he travelled to the North Mariana Islands to enter his plea, before travelling on to Australia now a free man. NGOs and media figures have voiced concerns that Assange’s guilty plea will have a chilling effect on journalists.
The Grantham Research Institute based at LSE has published a report charting the rise of climate litigation. The report found that in 2023, 230 new cases were filed against governments and companies challenging their response to the climate crisis. The report describes how these cases are reaching new domestic jurisdictions and anticipates that more cases are likely to be filed after the success of KlimaSeniorinnen and ors v. Switzerland at the ECtHR. In the UK, the Supreme Court recently held that the grant of planning permission for oil production in Surrey was unlawful as it failed to assess the greenhouse gas emissions that would inevitably arise after the oil was burnt. The Supreme Court emphasised the importance of public participation in environmental decision-making, leading some to speculate that the judgment could spur on new legal challenges to climate policy. See Rosalind English’s post on this ruling in the UKHRB here.
In international news
This week saw multiple international courts react to Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine. International Criminal Court (ICC) judges have issued arrest warrants against Russian officials Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu (former Minister of Defence) and Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov (Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence). The ICC judges found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that they bear individual criminal responsibility for crimes including directing attacks at civilian objectives, causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects and inhumane acts. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that Russia is responsible for a wide variety of human rights abuses in Crimea, a Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia in 2014. The judgment deals with events that took place before the full scale invasion in 2022, and chronicles a systematic campaign of repression against Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar civil society. This includes the transfer of political prisoners to Russia and restrictions on Ukrainian language and culture. The ECtHR unanimously found breaches of articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, articles 1 and 2 of Protocol 1, articles 2 of Protocol 4, and articles 14 and 18.
The ICC has allowed the UK government to present legal arguments that it does not have jurisdiction over Israeli nationals, likely delaying the court’s decision whether or not to issue arrest warrants against PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant (Minister of Defence). The NGO Forbidden Stories has collaborated with Israeli +972 magazine to document the alleged targeting of journalists within Gaza, as over 100 journalists have been killed since October 2023. The UN has published another famine alert for Gaza stating that 96% of the population faces acute food insecurity at “crisis” level or higher.
In the courts
The Court of Appeal has held that the National Crime Agency (NCA) misdirected itself in law when deciding not to investigate whether imported cotton products from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) were the product of forced labour or other human rights abuses committed by China. The Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim minority subject to intense repression in China, which some argue amounts to a genocide (this is disputed by the UK government). The court recognised that there is a consensus regarding widespread exploitation and abuse within China’s cotton production and that 85% of Chinese cotton comes from XUAR. The court held that the NCA was wrong to state that it could not start an investigation unless a specific consignment of cotton produced through human rights abuses was identified. Furthermore, the NCA was wrong to state that providing “adequate consideration” for goods could prevent goods imported into the UK from constituting criminal property.
The US Supreme Court has struck down the Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the most influential precedents in US administrative law. The “Chevron doctrine” was a rule of statutory interpretation; it stated that where Congress did not directly address the meaning of a statute, a court was required to defer to the administrative agencies’ interpretation as long as it was reasonable. In the leading judgment, Judge Roberts stated that it is the role of the courts to “decide legal questions by applying their own judgment” and “it thus remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says”. Therefore, this case represents a big shift in the balance of power from the executive to the judiciary.
Like this:
Like Loading...
1 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
R (C) v Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis [2010] WLR (D) 193 – Read judgment
Last month, Matt Hill posted on a case relating to the retention of DNA profiles and fingerprints by the police, for which the full judgment is finally available. Permission has been granted for an appeal directly to the Supreme Court, and the outcome of that appeal may have interesting implications for the status of European Court of Human Rights decisions in domestic law.
It is worth revisiting the decision in order to extract some of the principles, as although not novel, they do highlight the difficulties for claimants who have taken a case to the European Court of Human Rights and won, but who are still waiting for their decision to be implemented by the UK government.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
29 October 2018 by Conor Monighan
Conor Monighan brings us the latest updates in human rights law
Credit: The Guardian
In the News:
Saudi Arabia has admitted that the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead. The man was last seen entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
At first Saudi Arabia refused to admit the journalist was dead, then claimed he was killed in a fist fight, before suggesting he was killed by a rogue operation. A man posing as Khashoggi left the consulate the same day and walked around the nearby area.
The country’s public prosecutor has launched an investigation. King Salman announced a restructuring of the kingdom’s intelligence services. He has also dismissed deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al Assiri and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s nearest adviser, Saud al-Qahtani. 18 other suspects have been arrested and remain under investigation. The location of the journalist’s remains is unclear.
Donald Trump called the Saudi’s response ‘credible’, and senior US officials met with the Crown Prince last week. Trump has promised a robust response, but has said he does not want to damage American jobs by cutting arms sales.
Much of the information was initially leaked by Turkey, which sees Saudi Arabia as a rival in the region. President Erdogan has claimed the murder was planned days in advance.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
13 September 2021 by William Craig Cohen
In the news:
Hundreds of people attended the funeral services for Sophie and Lee Martyn on Monday, killed last month by Jake Davison, who was active on ‘incel’ or ‘involuntary celibate’ forums (though not describing himself as one). Over 50 people, including the five gunned down by Davison in Plymouth have now been killed by incels across the Anglophone world, who blame women for their own perceived lack of sexual and social status. Incel ideology has been linked to the far right, with obsessions over male appearance and phrenology. Biological determinism defines their beliefs in their inability to find sexual partners, which, when poured into online melting-pots already occupied by anti-feminists and white supremacists, can enflame similar senses of entitlement and injustice that may consume disaffected and reclusive (generally white) men.
In 2018, Amia Srinivasan posed the question in The London Review of Books:
how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.
Continue reading →Like this:
Like Loading...
6 November 2023 by Hal McNulty
In the news
As Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza begins, commentators and key global organisations are assessing whether international law is being broken by either side in the conflict. The UN said as early as 10th October that both Hamas and the Israeli military may have committed war crimes and that it is gathering evidence for potential prosecutions. Hamas’ terrorist attack of 7th October, which killed hundreds of noncombatants and abducted others for use as human shields and hostages, has already been labelled a crime under international humanitarian law. Meanwhile, Israel’s siege of Gaza, which includes shutting down food, water and electricity supplies and preventing humanitarian relief, may constitute the crime of collective punishment, according to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Karim Khan, the British barrister who currently acts as the ICC prosecutor, has said the ICC will pursue investigations into the 7th October attack as well as Israel’s activities in Gaza and the West Bank.
Donald Trump’s sons have taken the stand in their father’s fraud trial in New York. This case concerns the Trump family’s property business, and the prosecution hold that members of the family including Eric and Donald Trump Jr falsely inflated its finances and falsified records. Both sons of the property magnate denied wrongdoing and instead suggested an accountancy firm were to blame, with Trump Jr remarking in testimony that ‘I leave it to my accountants.’ Eric Trump was confronted with email evidence that, despite his assertions, he was in fact closely involved with the construction of the company’s financial statements. The prosecution are seeking a fine of $250m and a ban on Donald Trump and his adult sons doing business in the state.
The Isle of Man Parliament has progressed an assisted-dying legalisation bill. The private members bill was brought by Alex Allinson MHK (Member of the House of Keys), who labelled the proposal a move towards “compassion, choice, and autonomy,” while other MHKs spoke against the bill on the grounds that safeguards against coercion would be difficult to put in place. The bill has it that those eligible would have to conform to several criteria: terminally-ill, over the age of 18, resident on the Isle of Man for at least 12 months, and to have the legal capacity of make the decision and a “clear and settled intention to end their life.” Rob Callister MHK raised the concern that the island become a “death tourism” hotspot, should the bill be passed with its current residency minimum. The campaign group Dignity in Dying has called for the central government in Westminster to follow suit, the Royal College of Surgeons having recently withdrawn its opposition to the proposal.
In other news
The chair of the Bar Council has proposed a solution to the over-use of Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP). SLAPPs typically involve a powerful individual or organisation targeting financially-weaker journalists or publishers with the threat of bringing onerous legal actions. They have been the subject of much public criticism lately, and are described as undermining the democratic principles of free speech and the rule of law. Nick Vineall KC has suggested that those who cynically pursue claims in order to shut down legitimate criticism and public debate should be liable in damages for acting contrary to the public interest. “The public interest is damaged by not having access to information which should never have been restrained, while the reputation of the claimant is unjustifiably protected for a period because something which ought to have been said about them is not said for a period of time, and sometimes of course forever.” Speaking at the IBA conference in Paris, Vineall made a comparison to the practice of applicants for injunctions accepting an undertaking to pay damages in case their claim turns out to be unjustified and the injunction causes harm to the defendant. Listen to our interview with Greg Callus on the subject of SLAPPs on Law Pod UK here.
A leading thinktank has warned that Britain’s public services are stuck in a “doom loop” of recurrent crises as a result of government’s short-term planning. The Institute for Government said that, due to prioritising short-term goals over long-term solutions, underfunding public services, and reversing policy decisions within short periods of time, the British state is underperforming across a range of public services and organisations. “The result is crumbling schools, NHS computers that don’t turn on, and not enough prison cells to house prisoners.” The report cites the crown court backlog, standing in June at a record high of 64,709 cases, and concludes the prison system is “at bursting point” due to over-crowding and under-staffing.
The Scottish government has released a legislative proposal that would give ministers the power to assess and ‘remediate’ (repair or remove) buildings with unsafe cladding without owners’ consent and to evacuate the occupants of unsafe buildings. The Housing (Cladding Remediation) Bill creates a new offence for obstructing or failing to assist with assessment, and introduces the concept of a Scottish ‘responsible developers’ scheme, which would encourage developers to fund remediation work.
In the courts
In Scottish Association of Landlords v Lord Advocate [2023] CSOH 76, the Scottish Court of Session determined that the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 did not disproportionately interfere with article 1 of the ECHR protocol 1, which states that ‘every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions.’ The court held that the Scottish government’s assessment of proportionality, in bringing a bill that caps rent and places a moratorium on evictions in private residential tenancies, did not proceed manifestly without reasonable foundation.
Like this:
Like Loading...
26 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
Reiterating the last roundup’s call, if you know an individual, campaign group or NGO which deserves to have its local or national human rights work recognised, nominations for The Liberty Human Rights Award close on 30th September 2011, so there’s still time to get nominating!
In the news
Dale farm evictions
Last week residents at the UK’s largest illegal travellers’ site, at Dale Farm in Essex, won a court injunction delaying their planned eviction. A High Court decision on an injunction halting the eviction of residents from the UK’s largest illegal travellers’ site will take place today.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
30 April 2012 by Isabel McArdle
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has launched the Human Rights and Democracy- The 2011 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Report, which aims to provide “a comprehensive look at the human rights work of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) around the world in 2011“. The report makes for essential reading for anyone with an interest in human rights at the global level.
The report contains a section devoted to the Arab Spring, which it describes as being “about citizens demanding their legitimate human rights and dignity” and having “no single cause“. The report also comments on the role of human rights protection in safeguarding Britain’s national security and promoting Britain’s prosperity.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
29 October 2015 by Isabel McArdle
The European Parliament has awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Saudi Arabian blogger, Raif Badawi. The Prize, named after Andrei Sakharov who spoke out publicly against the nuclear arms race during the Cold War and criticised Soviet society, is awarded to those who “have made an exceptional contribution to the fight for human rights across the globe, drawing attention to human rights violations as well as supporting the laureates and their cause.”
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
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.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
3 December 2018 by Eleanor Leydon
In the Courts:
Conway, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice [2018] UKSC B1: The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a sufferer of motor neurone disease, in the latest of a line of challenges to the UK’s ban on assisting suicide. The applicant was contesting the Divisional Court’s refusal to declare the statutory ban on assisting suicide to be incompatible with his article 8 rights.
The question for the court was whether his case raised “an arguable point of law of general public importance” which ought to be heard by the Supreme Court at this time. Whilst the points of law were undoubtedly arguable, and the public importance obvious, the court concluded “not without some reluctance” that the applicant’s prospects of success did not justify granting permission to appeal. Rosalind English has more detail here.
Stott, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice [2018] UKSC 59: The appellant was a prisoner who had been classed as ‘dangerous’ and accordingly given an Extended Determinate Sentence (EDS), under which he would become eligible for parole only after serving two-thirds of the appropriate custodial term. This was in various ways narrower than the ordinary parole eligibility of other categories of prisoner. The appellant claimed unlawful discrimination under Article 14 ECHR, combined with Article 5 (the right to liberty).
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
2 July 2015 by Fraser Simpson
Photo credit: Guardian
Reid, Re Judicial Review, [2015] CSOH 84 – read judgment.
The Outer House of the Court of Session has refused a prisoner’s claim for damages resulting from an alleged failure to afford him a reasonable opportunity to rehabilitate himself.
by Fraser Simpson
For a refresher on the Scottish Court system, see David Scott’s post here.
This case follows a Supreme Court judgment last year in which it was affirmed that under Article 5 ECHR there exists an implied duty to provide prisoners with a reasonable opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and to show that they are no longer a danger to the public (R (on the application Haney and Others) v. The Secretary of State for Justice, [2014] UKSC 66). According to the Supreme Court, a failure to satisfy this duty does not affect the lawfulness of the detention but it does entitle the prisoner to damages.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
21 September 2012 by Matthew Hill
Communist prisoners held during the Malaya emergency Photograph: Jack Birns/Time & Life Pictures
Chong Nyok Keyu and ors v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and another [2012] EWHC 2445 (Admin), read judgment
Although the High Court has rejected an attempt to force the Government to hold a public inquiry into an alleged massacre of unarmed civilians by British troops in 1948, the case represents a further example of the use of the Courts to redress historical grievances.
There are two German words for dealing with the traumatic recent past, neither of which has a direct equivalent in English. This linguistic quirk reflects history and national self-identity. The defeats of the Kaiser, the Nazis and the GDR Communists led to national introspection in Germany, whereas the United Kingdom, on the winning side in each of the those three struggles, evaded such soul-searching. The post-war decline was relatively gentle and easy to fit in to the national myth of historical continuity. An Empire absent-mindedly acquired was considered to be the subject of an orderly and benevolent liquidation, with lasting benefits of railways and the rule of law left to the inheritors.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
1 June 2010 by Adam Wagner
The European Court
The UK Supreme Court Blog has posted a useful round-up of key European Court of Human Rights judgments from the past few months.
The following cases catch the eye (all summaries courtesy of the UK Supreme Court Blog):
Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. the United Kingdom(Application no. 61498/08) (2 March 2010) This was a case about two Iraqis taken prisoner by the British troops in Iraq and handed over to the Iraqi authorities against the ECtHR’s previous orders. The ECtHR found a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture) as the two prisoners had been exposed to the death penalty which they would face in Iraq. This judgment is important in the context of a series of decisions and judgments on the death penalty (see paragraph. 123 of the judgment).
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
12 August 2011 by Rosalind English
Belmarsh Magistrate’s Court has ruled that Shrien Dewani can be extradited to South Africa to stand trial for the murder of his wife, the judge concluding that the hardships he would face there would fall short of oppression. On Monday 26 September the home secretary signed an order for his extradition.|updated
The South African government sought extradition for Dewani in order to put him on trial for the murder of his wife Anni in Cape Town last November. The newlyweds were being driven through the dangerous township of Gugulethu when their taxi was hijacked on November 13. Dewani was thrown out of the vehicle while his wife was driven off and shot dead. The authorities subsequently claimed to have evidence that Dewani had arranged the carjacking and shooting of his wife.
Dewani’s lawyers argued that the extradition proceedings were not only an abuse of the process of the court, but if extradition was granted, it would be a breach of the defendant’s human rights, particularly Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention. The abuse argument was predicated on allegations that the South African authorities had already prejudged Dewani’s guilt. As to the Convention arguments, evidence was advanced of widespread sexual assault and gang crime in the overcrowded South African prisons, including potentially lethal attacks by HIV infected inmates. His defence team also argued that he was too unwell to stand trial abroad, adducing medical evidence of severe depression and suicidal tendencies which would be exacerbated if he were sent to South Africa.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
12 June 2012 by Adam Wagner
The Government’s Consultation on Equal Civil Marriage ends on Thursday 14 June: you can fill in the brief online survey here if you haven’t already. In the meantime, the Church of England is on the front pages this morning with its own response, which amongst other things, warns that “it must be very doubtful whether limiting same-sex couples to non-religious forms and ceremonies could withstand a challenge under the European Convention on Human Rights”
The Church’s argument is set out on pages 10 to 13 of its response. It is interesting, and there might be something in it. However, it is clear from the rest of the document that the Church is, in its introduction, inflating the likelihood of a successful court challenge. This has of course made its way into the press coverage, where it is being suggested that a challenge would “probably” succeed. But even the Church’s own response, reading a little further, does not go this far.
Let’s consider the argument. The Church puts a number of propositions. First,
It remains the case that member states of the Council of Europe are not obliged to make legal provision for same-sex marriage.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
Recent comments