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It’s time for 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, updated each day, can be found here.
by Graeme Hall
In the news:
Prisoner voting remains in the headlines and given that the European Court of Human Rights has refused the UK government’s request to reconsider Greens and MT v UK, it’s not going to stray far. Benn Quinn, writing in the Guardian, notes that the UK is one of very few signatories to the Convention on Human Rights which has a blanket ban; a point picked up by Adam Wagner in his recent post.
JA (Ivory Coast) and ES (Tanzania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2009] EWCA Civ 1353 (CA (Civ Div) (Sedley LJ, Longmore LJ, Aikens LJ)
In these two cases, heard together, the Court of Appeal provided clarification of the circumstances in which Art. 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights entitles foreign nationals’ to remain in the UK in order to receive medical treatment.
Whilst many of us would prefer not to dwell on 2020, it was a year that produced many interesting decisions. In Episode 134, Michael Spencer and Jon Metzer talk to Emma-Louise Fenelon about the cases they consider to be 2020’s most significant landmarks.
In Episode 79 Emma-Louise Fenelon talks to Christopher Mellor about causation in inquests, and the findings of the Divisional Court in R (Chidlow) v HM Senior Coroner for Blackpool and Fylde [2019] EWHC 581 (Admin).
This episode was recorded shortly before the Court of Appeal decision was handed down in R (Maughan) v HM S Coroner for Oxfordshire [2019] EWCA Civ 809, upholding the civil standard of proof in relation to findings of suicide in inquests.
Dominic Ruck Keene has previously written about Maughan at first instance here and the Court of Appeal decision here.
Jeremy Hyam QC previously covered Maughan on the podcast in Episode 58 here.
The podcast also refers to the following cases (links to WestLaw):
R (Lewis) v HM Coroner for the Mid and North Division of Shropshire[2009] EWCA Civ 1403;
R (Tainton) v R. (on the application of Tainton) v HM Senior Coroner for Preston and West Lancashire[2016] EWHC 1396 (Admin)
R (Khan) v R. (on the application of Khan) v HM Coroner for West Hertfordshire [2002] EWHC 302 (Admin)
R v Sellu [2016] EWCA Crim 1716 CA
Law Pod UK is available on Spotify, iTunes, Audioboom, Podbean or wherever you listen to our podcasts. Please remember to rate and review us if you like what you hear.
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our 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
Will Detainee Inquiry hearings broadcast? Have your say
The Detainee Inquiry Panel has shown its commitment to carrying out an inquiry that is as open and inclusive as possible by inviting comments on their broadcasting proposal, before making a final decision. The Panel welcomes views on this issue from the media, potential witnesses, NGOs and any other groups or individuals who are interested in the Inquiry’s work. You may submit comments via email by 7th January 2012. You can find more details here.
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, updated each day, can be found here.
by Melinda Padron
Beginning with sad news, Lord Alan Rodger of Earlsferry, one of the justices of the Supreme Court, died yesterday. A detailed obituary has been published by HeraldScotland.
Last week Ken Clarke’s criminal justice system reform proposals were hit by a change of mind/u-turn (or as Prime Minister David Cameron put it, ‘a sign of strength’) on the part of Government. The most radical features of the proposed criminal justice reforms were dropped, chiefly amongst them the attempt to increase the 33% discount to sentences for guilty pleas to 50%. The move was arguably made as a result of public consultations and in particular pressure from the tabloid press. The announcement came alongside the publication of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. Joshua Rozenberg gives a brief outline of some of the new proposals which seek to lower the statistics on reoffending.
In our final episode of the year, Rosalind English, Lucy McCann and Jonathan Metzer discuss some of the most important judgments that have been handed down in the last twelve months. The recording of this episode took place a day before judgment was handed down in the “Rwanda case” ( R ((AAA) Syria and Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 3230 (Admin).
Below are the citations for all the cases discussed in this episode.
R (Morahan) v HM Assistant Coroner for West London [2022] EWCA Civ 1410
Attorney General’s Reference (No. 1 of 2022) [2022] EWCA Crim and Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland – Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Northern Ireland) Bill [2022] UKSC 32
R (Gardner) v SSHSC [2022] EWHC 967
R (Good Law Project & Runnymede Trust) v Prime Minister and SSHSC [2022] EWHC 298
R (HM, MA and KH) v SSHD [2022] EWHC 695 (Admin)
Leigh & Ors v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2022] EWHC 527 (Admin)
Hughes v Rattan [2022] EWCA Civ 107
Vardy v Rooney [2022] EWHC 2017 (QB) (“Agatha Christie).
A link to the full transcript for this episode is available here.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin of human rights news. 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 Wessen Jazrawi
In the news
It has been a quiet week in the blogosphere which suggests that everyone else has been as glued to the Olympics as I have. This week has seen the arrest of a 17 year old following abusive tweets to Tom Daley and a case looking at the interesting question of whether a Jewish girl could be allowed to have herself baptised, as well as cases concerning Article 8 applications. This week also marks the start of Parliamentary recess and the end of the Trinity legal term. The next couple of months will be quiet as the courts and parliament take their summer breaks.
Aseran and others v Ministry of Defence [2017] EWHC 3289 (QB) 14 December 2017 – read judgment
The High Court has upheld claims by four Iraqi civilians that their human rights had been breached by the British army. Their claims in tort were rejected as time-barred.
These were four claims in the large scale action known as the Iraqi civilian litigation. This judgment follows the first full trials of civil compensation claims in which the claimants themselves and other witnesses testified in an English courtroom. The introduction given by Leggatt J best explains the picture.
The claimants in these cases are Iraqi citizens who allege that they were unlawfully imprisoned and ill-treated …by British armed forces and who are claiming compensation from the Ministry of Defence. Questions of law raised by the conflict in Iraq, some of them novel and very hard questions, have been argued in the English courts and on applications to the European Court of Human Rights since soon after the conflict began. Until now, however, such arguments have taken place on the basis of assumed facts or limited written evidence.
The four claims were tried as lead cases out of more than six hundred remaining cases. All the claims were advanced on two legal bases. The first was the general law of tort under which a person who has suffered injury as a result of a civil wrong can claim damages from the wrongdoer. Because the relevant events occurred in Iraq, the Iraqi law of tort was applicable. But the claims were subject to a doctrine known as Crown act of state which precludes the court from passing judgment on a claim in tort arising out of an act done with the authority of the British government in the conduct of a military operation abroad. Continue reading →
Raed Mahajna v Secretary of State for the Home Department IA/21/21631/2011 – read judgment
1 Crown Office Row’s Neil Sheldon appeared for the Secretary of State in this case. He is not the writer of this post.
Late last year I posted about the case of Mr Mahajna, a national of Israel (but of Palestinian origin), who appealed against a deportation order issued by the Home Secretary under section 3(5) of the Immigration Act 1971 on the basis that his presence in the United Kingdom was not conducive to public good. To recap:
The Government has a list of “Unacceptable Behaviours” which forms the basis of its policy on excluding non-nationals under that provision. This includes actions expressing views which are likely to foster hatred and lead to inter-community violence in the UK (this policy was recent the focus of judicial consideration in the Court of Appeal in the case of R (Naik) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 1546).
The Home Secretary relied on five pieces of evidence which were said to fall within the scope of the list of unacceptable behaviours and justify her conclusion that Mr Mahajna’s presence was not conducive to the public good.
The First-Tier Tribunal (FTT) examined those pieces of evidence. It concluded that the Home Secretary was entitled to conclude that they constituted examples of unacceptable behaviour and fell within the scope of the exclusion policy.
Although the order to deport Mr Mahajna constituted an interference with his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) because he was unable to carry out a number of public speaking engagements in the UK, the views of the Home Secretary as to what was in the public interest were entitled to significant weight in assessing whether or not that interference was proportionate.
The FTT ultimately concluded that the interference was proportionate, and the deportation order was upheld. Continue reading →
Case C-131/12: Google Spain SL & Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) & Mario Costeja González – read Opinion of AG Jääskinen
This reference to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) concerned the application of the 1995 Data Protection Directive to the operation of internet search engines. Apart from demonstrating the many complications thrown up by this convoluted and shortsighted piece of regulation, this case raises the fascinating question of the so-called right to be forgotten, and the issue of whether data subjects can request that some or all search results concerning them are no longer accessible through search engine.
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Lukaszewski and others, R (on the application of Halligen) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] UKSC 20 – read judgement
The Supreme Court has ruled that there should be a discretion in exceptional circumstances for judges to extend time for service of appeals against extradition, where the statutory time limits would otherwise operate to prevent an appeal in a manner conflicting with the right of access to an appeal process under Article 6(1) of the Human Rights Convention
The following report is based on the Supreme Court’s press summary. A full analysis of the case will follow shortly.
Background facts
Lukaszewski (“L”), Pomiechowski (“P”) and Rozanski (“R”) are Polish citizens who are each the subject of a European Arrest Warrant (“EAW”) issued by the Polish court. Each is wanted in order to serve an existing sentence. L is wanted, in addition, to stand trial on ten charges of fraud. The fourth appellant, Halligen (“H”), is a British citizen whose extradition is sought to the USA under Part 2 of the Extradition Act 2003 (the “Act”) to face allegations of wire fraud and money laundering. All four appellants were arrested and brought before Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Continue reading →
Neil Garnham QC (now Mr Justice Garnham) and Robert Wastell of 1COR acted for the Secretary of State for the Home Department at the Litvinenko Inquiry. David Evans QC and Alasdair Henderson acted for AWE Plc. None was involved in preparing this post.
The publication on Thursday of the long awaited report by Sir Robert Owen into the circumstances of the death of Alexander Litivenko from polonium poisoning on 23 November 2006 has (unsurprisingly) resulted in bitter criticism by the Russian Government of the Inquiry’s conclusions that the poisoning was probably directed by the Russian Federal Security Service, and probably approved by President Putin. The report is long (246 pages not including Appendices), but in page after page of readable and measured prose Sir Robert Owen tells the extraordinary story of Alexander Litvinenko’s death and the subsequent 9 year investigation into it. Continue reading →
IFAW Internationaler Tierschutz-Fonds GmbH; 21 June 2012, read judgment, on appeal from judgment of the General Court read judgment
I am in the middle of a series of posts about the way in which the EU institutions can be kept in check by individuals, including looking at challenges to EU measures (see my Inuit post) and the specifics of seeking an internal review of EU implementing Regulations via the EU Aarhus Regulation 1367/2006 (see my post on the pesticides and air quality challenges). So it was a happy coincidence that last Thursday, the CJEU allowed an appeal in a case concerning documents sought by an NGO from the Commission. We are here in the territory of all EU institutions and all EU issues, not simply environmental questions arising under the Aarhus Convention, though, as we shall see, this is an environmental case.
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It’s time for 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, updated each day, can be found here.
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found 
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, updated each day, can be 
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