Search Results for: prisoners/page/61/[2001] EWCA Civ 1546

Rose Slowe: Reflections on the ‘Three Knights Opinion’ and Article 50 TEU

9 March 2017 by Guest Contributor

On 17 February 2017, Bindmans LLP published an Opinion solicited from several leading authorities on EU law concerning Article 50 TEU. The so-dubbed ‘Three Knights Opinion’ put forward compelling legal arguments in support of why an Act of Parliament at the end of the Article 50 negotiation process is necessary in order to ensure that Brexit occurs in accordance with domestic and, by extension, EU law. These contentions, and Professor Elliot’s rebuttal, warrant careful consideration.

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Misrepresenting the law on squatting

26 September 2011 by Adam Wagner

Today, an open letter from 158 lawyers and academics has been published in The Guardian claiming that the law on squatting, on which the Government has proposed reforms, has been misrepresented by politicians and the media.

I am one of the letter’s signatories. Amongst other things, it states that:

a significant number of recent media reports have stated that squatters who refuse to leave someone’s home are not committing a criminal offence and that a change in the law – such as that proposed by the government – is needed to rectify this situation.

The accompanying article is here. One interesting aspect of this campaign is that it was organised in part by one of the longest standing and best legal blogs, Nearly Legal. Nearly Legal have used social media, which an ever increasing number of lawyers follow, to gather many of the signatures. Their response is here and some of their previous posts on the topic here and here.

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“British Troops to be Exempted from Human Rights Law”

4 October 2016 by Rosalind English

..is the headline of the leading article in The Times today.

Theresa May vows to end ‘vexatious claims’ against service personnel. In the UK about £100 million has been spent since 2004 dealing with thousands of cases lodged against soldiers who served in Iraq. Many were launched under ECHR laws on rights to life and liberty.

Apparently the Prime Minister will announce today that under proposals she has put forward, Britain plans to opt out of international human rights law when it goes to war. British troops will be free to take “difficult decisions” on the battlefield without fear of legal action when they come home. This move follows an outcry over investigations into thousands of claims against soldiers by a government body examining alleged human rights abuses in Iraq. Mrs May said that the plan would

put an end to the industry of vexatious claims that has pursued those who served in previous conflicts.

Britain will put in place temporary derogations against parts of the Convention before planned military actions.

Since the Convention has been extended to cover actions by soldiers outside the jurisdiction of the UK and other signatory states, many senior officers have warned that operations will be undermined by soldiers wary of taking risks.
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Making a Fist of It: The Law and Obscenity

9 January 2012 by Guest Contributor

On Friday 6 January 2012, a historic case came to a conclusion in Courtroom 7 of Southwark Crown Court. Michael Peacock was unanimously acquitted, after a four-day trial that saw the outdated obscenity law of England and Wales in the dock.

Peacock had been charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for allegedly distributing ‘obscene’ ‘gay’ DVDs, which featured fisting, urolagnia (‘watersports’) and BDSM.

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The Sun gets regulator reprimand and publishes correction for misleading on European human rights

26 June 2013 by Adam Wagner

Updated | Remember Inhuman Rights, The Sun’s garbled reporting of this Court of Appeal decision on Criminal Record Bureau checks? In February, I wrote this: No, The Sun, the Human Rights Act is not the EU. My complaint was about the headline, which screamed “Now  EU could let fiends like him prey on your children“. This was obvious nonsense, since the judgment had nothing to do with the EU.

Well, I am delighted to report that following my post, the European Commission, which represents the interests of the European Union, complained to the Press Complaints Commission and the complaint has now been upheld. There was a “clear failure to take appropriate care over the accuracy of the coverage and a breach of the Editor’s Code, which was particularly significant at a time when the roles of both the EU and the Convention were a matter of major public debate“.

The newspaper has now published a correction. The full Adjudication can be found here. This is the main bit: 
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Birth certificate cannot be retrospectively changed to reflect father’s gender reassignment

23 April 2015 by Rosalind English

JK, R(on the application of) v Secretary of State for Home Department and another [2015] EWHC 990 (Admin) 20 April 2015 – read judgment

This case concerned the rights of transgender women, and their families, in particular the right to keep private the fact that they are transgender.

The Court heard a challenge to the requirement in the UK’s birth registration system that men who had changed gender from male to female should be listed as the “father” on the birth certificates of their biological children. Having decided that this did engage the claimant’s privacy rights under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, in conjunction with the right not to be discriminated against under Article 14, the Court concluded that the interference was justified.

Factual and legal background

The clamant JK had been born male. She was married to a woman, KK, and the couple had two naturally conceived children. After the birth of the first child in 2012, JK was diagnosed with gender identity disorder and concomitant gender dysphoria. In October 2012, she started a course of feminising hormone treatment. The treatment pathway requires two years living as a female before consideration is given for referral for gender reassignment surgery. Before the claimant started feminising hormone therapy, KK fell pregnant a second time, again conceiving naturally by the claimant.
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New button for easy tweeting

12 August 2010 by Guest Contributor

We have added a new ‘Tweet’ button at the bottom of all posts (after you have clicked through to the full article). This means that if you use Twitter, you will be able to share our posts quickly and easily.

This is a good opportunity to explain how the blog links in with Twitter. Our Twitter feed can be found here, or by clicking on the Twitter icon which is always on the right sidebar.

The feed updates instantly with links to new posts on the blog, as well as with all of the links to external human rights news items which are listed along the right sidebar. For more information on how to keep updated through Facebook, RSS and Twitter, you can always click on the subscribe tab at the top of the page. Enjoy!

Why the Sharon Shoesmith decision is good for access to justice (and it has nothing to do with the case)

2 September 2010 by Adam Wagner

Yesterday, Sharon Shoesmith was given permission to appeal in the judicial review of her dismissal by Haringey council as a result of the Baby Peter scandal. The case itself is complex and fascinating, but the detail should not overshadow the open and forward-thinking way in which the case has been dealt with.

The case was always likely to be full of controversy, complexity as well as salacious detail. This is not in itself remarkable; public law is often the cutting edge of social and political issues. What is unusual is the manner in which Mr Justice Foskett (full disclosure: he is a former member of my chambers) approached his task by not just in looking inwards to the legal system, but also outwards to the general public.

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Warning for bloggers and tweeters as newspapers found guilty of contempt of court

3 March 2011 by Adam Wagner

Attorney General v Associated Newspapers Ltd & Anor [2011] EWHC 418 (Admin) – Read judgment

For the first time  a court in England has convicted two newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Sun, of contempt of court in breach of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, for the publication of a photograph relating to an ongoing criminal trial  on their websites.

The judgment contains an important warning for bloggers, tweeters and journalists who use instant news to report on criminal trials: “instant news requires instant and effective protection for the integrity of a criminal trial“.

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Privacy of a doctor under GMC investigation clashes with that of his patient

24 September 2016 by David Hart KC

Dr DB v. General Medical Council [2016] EWHC 2331 (QB), 23 September 2016, Soole J – read judgment

An interesting three-way privacy fight between a GP, a patient who had complained about his treatment by the GP, and the GMC who had investigated that complaint. The prize in that fight was a copy of a medical report obtained by the GMC from an independent expert, which had concluded that the GP’s care had fallen below “but not seriously below” the expected standard.

The patient had wanted a copy of the report; all he had seen so far was a one-page summary. His motive was to investigate a possible claim for clinical negligence, arising out of the delayed diagnosis of his bladder cancer. The GP refused consent. 

The GMC then concluded it should disclose the report to the patient. And the GP brought these proceedings to stop disclosure.
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Twelve weeks in prison for sick jokes on Facebook? Really?

9 October 2012 by Adam Wagner

Updated x 2 | A 20-year-old has been sent to prison for twelve weeks for posting offensive and derogatory comments about missing five-year-old April Jones on his Facebook page. His attempts at humour were undoubtedly stupid, offensive and exhibited incredibly poor taste and timing. But is a long spell in prison really the way we should be dealing with offensive idiots? Is a law which was passed before social media existed now placing a significant chill on our freedom of expression rights?

Matthew Woods pleaded guilty to an offence under s.127 of the Communications Act 2003, which prohibits a person sending “by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character“. He was sentenced at Chorley Magistrates’ Court.

I will not republish Woods’ comments here, but some of them are quoted in this Evening Standard article. 
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The Round-Up: Christchurch, Islamophobia, Home Office Failures and Modern Slavery

25 March 2019 by Alethea Redfern

A white supremacist murdered 50 worshippers and injured 50 more in two consecutive terrorist attacks at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand during Friday Prayer on 15 March 2019.  The victims’ ages ranged from 3 to 77. Immediately prior to the attacks, the perpetrator emailed a 73-page manifesto to more than 30 recipients, including several media outlets and the office of Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. It expressed anti-immigrant hate speech, white supremacist rhetoric, and an unequivocal statement that the motive behind the attacks was to accelerate anti-Muslim and anti-migrant sentiment across majority white nations. 

Julian Assange: Bail granted and judge gives permission to tweet

14 December 2010 by Adam Wagner

Julian Assange, the founder and head of Wikileaks, has succeeded in an initial challenge to last week’s refusal to grant bail in his extradition case. And, in an appropriate nod to the internet age, the judge granted two people the right to tweet from the court.

The tweeters (definition: users of Twitter, a social website which allows people to post 140 character messages to people who chose to follow them) are Alexi Mostrous, a Times special correspondent, and Heather Brook, a writer. Mostrous tweeted at 14:30:

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The Weekly Round-Up: Gender Recognition in Europe, Employment Rights, & ECHR membership contested

14 October 2024 by Catherine Churchill

In UK News

Last week, the Government published the new Employment Rights Bill – a bill Deputy PM Angela Raynor has said seeks to “turn the page on an economy riven with insecurity, ravaged by dire productivity and blighted by low pay”. Among the measures included are steps towards ending “exploitative” zero-hour contracts, the introduction of a statutory probation period for new hires, and the removal of the two-year qualifying period for claims to unfair dismissal. The bill places significant emphasis on flexible working as the future of employment, stating that it will be “default for all, unless the employer can prove it is unreasonable”. With various aspects of the bill strengthening protections to women in the workplace, Jemima Olchawski, CEO of the Fawcett Society, has called the bill “a win for women”. However, the bill is not without its critics. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite union, claimed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the bill has “more holes than Swiss cheese”, leaving loopholes for employers to evade the provisions on zero-hour contracts and fire & rehire. Whistleblowing charity Protect have also expressed regret that the bill does not go far enough to strengthen protections for whistleblowers.

The Tory leadership race continued last week as the candidates were whittled down to a final two: Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, both considered to be on the right of the party. Membership of the ECHR has become an increasingly central issue in the race. While Jenrick has promised to leave the ECHR immediately if ever elected PM – calling the issue one of “leave or remain” – Badenoch told Sky News she believes that focusing on the ECHR “shuts down the conversation we need to have with the entire country” about migration. Both candidates have been the subject of criticism for comments made during the party conference. Jenrick, in support of his campaign to leave the ECHR, has controversially claimed that special forces are opting to kill instead of catch terrorists as otherwise the “European Court will set them free”. The charity Action on Armed Violence have stated that Jenrick’s comments “do a disservice to the serious allegations at hand” in the inquiry into SAS killings in Afghanistan, which must be “allowed to proceed without political interference”. Badenoch has come under fire for comments insinuating that maternity pay is “excessive” and that “about 5 to 10%” of civil servants are so bad that they “should be in prison”. She has backtracked on both fronts, claiming her comments were “misrepresented”.

In Other News

A UN report published last Thursday – three days after the one-year anniversary of the October 7^th attacks –  contains findings that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system”, committing war crimes in doing so. The report further states that Israeli security forces have “deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel”, with children having “borne the brunt” of the health system’s “collapse”. It was further found that the “institutionalised mistreatment” of Palestinian detainees had taken place under direct orders from Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli National Security Minister. On Friday, in a statement from its mission in Geneva, Israel took strong objection to the report, calling its conclusions “outrageous” and a “blatant attempt to delegitimise the very existence of the State of Israel and obstruct its right to protect its population, while covering up the crimes of terrorist organisations”. Israeli representatives have accused the commission behind the report, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, of creating an “alternate reality” and refused to cooperate with the investigations preceding the report’s compilation.

On Wednesday, the United Nations Human Rights Council in their 57^th session adopted a resolution on Afghanistan in response to the escalating crisis in the country, extending the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan. The report resulting from resolution 54/1 to carry out a “stocktaking” of accountability options on Afghanistan was also presented at the session. The report detailed a variety of recommendations to Afghan de facto authorities, including the establishment of a moratorium on executions and the implementation of victim-centred transitional justice measures. While Amnesty International celebrated that the stocktaking marked the “first time in recent years that the UN is debating how to address serious accountability gaps”, the measure was nevertheless “inadequate” in the face of the crimes under international law being committed in Afghanistan. Amnesty also criticised the resolution adopted this week, claiming the council have “shied away from sufficiently supporting justice for the people of Afghanistan who have placed their hopes in the international community” by failing to establish an independent international accountability mechanism.

In the Courts

Last week, the European Court of Justice ruled that European Member States are obligated to recognise legal gender identity changes conducted in other Member States. The Court held that Romania’s refusal to recognise the applicant’s UK Gender Recognition Certificate constituted a violation of his right to move and reside freely within the Member States of the European Union. In a press release accompanying the ruling, the CJEU stated that “gender, like a first name, is a fundamental element of personal identity; […] a divergence between identities resulting from such a refusal of recognition creates difficulties for a person in proving his or her identity in daily life as well as serious professional, administrative and private inconvenience”. The applicant’s legal counsel, human rights lawyer Iustina Ionescu, told charity Transgender Europe that the “verdict has shown that trans people are equal citizens of the European Union”.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Cyprus’ immediate return to Lebanon of Syrian asylum seekers intercepted at sea constituted a violation of their human rights – in particular, the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment. There had also been a violation of Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 (prohibition of the collective expulsion of aliens). Cyprus had failed to consider the risk of lack of access to asylum in Lebanon, the risk of refoulement, and the individual situations of the asylum seekers. The Court paid significant attention to a Human Rights Watch report published in September 2020 which revealed systematic mistreatment of asylum seekers by Cypriot authorities. The report had been referenced in the applicants’ arguments and was not challenged by counsel for the Government. Cypriot Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis has stressed that the events concerned occurred in 2020, under the previous administration, and has denied the allegation that the government has been carrying out further refugee pushbacks since the ruling.

THE ROUND UP: victims of forced labour, assisted dying and the Hillsborough law

3 April 2017 by Sarah Ewart

There’s a lot to cover this week, as the Round Up looks at (among other things) Strasbourg’s view on forced labour in Greece, the High Court’s latest decision on assisted dying, a mooted Hillsbrough law, Katie Hopkins’ twitter fiasco receiving short shrift in the courts and, inevitably, the triggering of Article 50.

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