Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/40/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
31 March 2015 by Guest Contributor
The New Zealand Parliament seems about to drop that country’s commitment to the rule of law from the Act underpinning the judicial branch. Retiring Supreme Court judge (and former Solicitor-General) Sir John McGrath thinks that’s worrying. He’s right. There’s still time for ex-pat Kiwis to lobby the Minister of Justice.
One of the first legislative measures of the young South Pacific colony, back in 1841, drafted in part by the Birmingham born first Chief Justice, Sir William Martin, was the creation of what is now known as the High Court of New Zealand.
That legislation has been updated over the years, significantly in the 1880s before consolidation in 1908 in the Judicature Act. That Act was overseen by the country’s fourth Chief Justice, the remarkable, Shetland born, Sir Robert Stout.
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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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26 June 2013 by Rosalind English
CM v The Executor of the Estate of EJ (deceased) [2013] EWHC 1680 (Fam) – read judgment
You would have thought the law would be entirely behind a person who intervenes to help a stranger in distress. Indeed most civil law countries impose a positive duty to rescue, which means that if a person finds someone in need of medical help, he or she must take all reasonable steps to seek medical care and render best-effort first aid. A famous example of this was the investigation into the photographers at the scene of Lady Diana’s fatal car accident: they were suspected of violation of the French law of “non-assistance à personne en danger” (deliberately failing to provide assistance to a person in danger), which can be punished by up to 5 years imprisonment and a fine of up to 70,000 euros. But the position in common law countries like the UK and the United States is completely different: you can watch a child drown and not be held to account.
Of course no good citizen would do such a thing and in this case the claimant, a medical doctor, went out of her way to try to save the life of someone in extremis. She was driving home, off duty, in South East London, when she saw a body lying motionless on the pavement.
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2 October 2013 by Martin Downs
The recently released statistics from the Department for Education showing an increase of 15% in the adoption of looked after children in the last year further highlights the government’s preferred strategy for ensuring the welfare of children in care.
In my recent post, I considered the main thrust of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re B-S which concerned the rigour which was expected of evidence, hearings and Judgments before a Placement Order was made.
However, the Court also dealt with the issue which had concerned Lord Justice McFarlane when he gave permission to appeal namely, where a Court has already made an order that a child may be placed for adoption and that has happened and the prospective adopter has applied for an Adoption Order, in what circumstances can a parent seek to stop it going ahead?
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29 May 2012 by Adam Wagner
The Justice and Security Bill, which proposes to introduce secret ‘Closed Material Procedure’ (CMP) hearings into civil trials, has been published. Here are some useful resources for picking your way through the controversy:
- The Ministry of Justice’s page on the Bill, including some ‘myth-busting’ (including ‘This is undermining the centuries old legal tradition’) is here.
- 84 responses to the Green Paper which led to this bill can be found here, and the Government’s response of 29 May is here.
- The Joint Committee on Human Rights’ highly critical report on the proposals is here.
- You can access all of the UK Human Rights Blog coverage of the secret trials proposals here, including our exclusive on the Special Advocates’ opposition to the proposals, which became the most damaging aspect of the case against the Green Paper.
More to come on the proposals soon…
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28 October 2012 by Guest Contributor
In its foreign policy, the UK Government is a keen advocate of national human rights institutions (NHRI’s). The Brighton Declaration, drafted by the UK, encourages Council of Europe States to consider ‘the establishment, if they have not already done so, of an independent National Human Rights Institution’. In June 2012 the UK signed a UN General Assembly resolution ‘Reaffirming the important role that such national institutions play and will continue to play.’
Yet at the same time, Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote to Theresa May MP raising concerns about proposals to reform Britain’s own NHRI, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC):
While fully respecting your Government’s priority to improve EHRC’s financial and operative performance as a public body, I would like to call on your Government to review some of the proposals with a view to preserving EHRC’s independence and to ensuring its continued compliance with the (Paris) Principles.
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22 October 2020 by Emma-Louise Fenelon
In Episode 128 Emma-Louise Fenelon talks to Marina Wheeler QC about the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, better known as the Cumberlege Review, which investigated the response of England’s healthcare system to patients’ reports of harm from drugs and medical devices.
Since the report was published in July (available here), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has indicated it will be taking a number of steps in response to the review (more information here). In recent weeks a number of questions were tabled asking what the government plans to do next in response.
The episode includes a discussion about consent, and reference to Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11
Find an article written by Marina Wheeler QC and Amelia Walker on the Cumberlege Review on page 5 of Issue 6 of the 1COR Quarterly Medical Law Review (QMLR).
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25 November 2013 by Rosalind English
A Local Authority v SY [2013] EWHC 3485 COP (12 November 2013] – read judgment
A judge in the Court of Protection has ruled that a man who had “exploited and took advantage” of a young woman for the purpose of seeking to bolster his immigration appeal had engaged in an invalid marriage ceremony. The man, said Keehan J, had
“deliberately targeted” the respondent because of her learning difficulties and her vulnerability.
The courts would not tolerate such “gross exploitation.”
This was an application by a local authority in the Court of Protection in respect of the capacity of the respondent, SY, to litigate and to make decisions in relation to her life.
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23 April 2010 by Adam Wagner
Lord Phillips
Lord Phillips, the head of the Supreme Court, spoke to lawyers this week on the future of the Human Rights Act 1998, which the Conservative Party have threatened to repeal. He said that now that the Act is in place, it would be very difficult to imagine a court ignoring the rights enshrined by it, even if it were repealed.
We will post the full speech if and when it becomes available. In the mean time, Afua Hirsch writing in the Guardian summarises his argument (reproduced after the page break below).
On a second-hand reading, it does seem somewhat hopeful to assume, as Lord Phillips appears to, that if the Act were repealed courts would still place rights in anything like the central position they have been since the its passing, largely through momentum. Lawyers tend to concentrate on points which win cases, rather than on first principles, and whilst human rights were a relevant consideration before the Act’s passing (judgments of the European Court of Human Rights were persuasive but not binding), they amounted to little more that.
That said, the Conservative party have pledged to replace the Act with something similar, a Bill of Rights. It is not yet clear what form it will take, but it is highly likely that the European Convention on Human Rights will be the starting point for its drafting, and it is likely to be a recalibration rather than a replacement. As such, human rights are most probably “here to stay”, but we should not overestimate the constitutional power of judges, or underestimate the power of Parliament to set the legal agenda.
Update 27/04/10
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2 July 2016 by Guest Contributor
Owain Thomas QC reviews this new book by 1 Crown Office Row’s own Sally Smith QC.
Sally Smith’s wonderful new biography of the great Edwardian advocate Edward Marshall Hall is the first reappraisal of his life and career since the celebrated biography by Marjoribanks, published only two years after his death. Since then the worlds of law, journalism, celebrity, and crime have become intertwined in so many complex ways, but Smith charts in this book the quite remarkable public life of the era’s most sought after barrister. He attained celebrity beyond the dreams of even the most fervent publicity hungry barrister. His cases were regularly front page news. Because of the deliciously lurid subject matter some might have got there anyway, but his name added a lustre and whetted the public appetite for the scandal to come with the promise of a coup de théâtre. Thousands waited for the verdicts outside the Old Bailey.
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12 November 2013 by Adam Wagner
The Daily Mail has belatedly “corrected” its front page story on human rights damages, over a month after it appeared on 7 October 2013. Early last month I blogged on the original bogus article, which was so poor it generated a response from the ordinarily placid Council of Europe.
I have quote-pincered “corrected” as despite the newspaper’s actions, the damage is already done. A month has passed, which in social media time might as well be million years. People have moved on. Another human rights myth is implanted in the collective consciousness, and no sad little correction is going to dislodge a front page headline.
And to make things worse, the story was amplified by a whole host of other newspapers which picked it up without bothering to check the facts, including the Telegraph (corrected) and Daily Star (as yet uncorrected).
What really rankles about this story is how wrong it was.
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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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29 August 2022 by Matthew Johnson
In the news:
Members of the Criminal Bar Association have voted in favour of an indefinite strike, escalating the industrial action that the courts have witnessed since June. The decision follows failed negotiations with the Ministry of Justice, with Dominic Raab still having not met with the CBA and the government standing firm in its position. The MoJ have expressed their disapproval of the decision, labelling it ‘irresponsible’. The CBA, alternatively, have accused the government of overseeing a ‘recklessly underfunded’ criminal justice system. In response to the decision, Raab has proposed granting more solicitors rights of audience, allowing more to advocate in the Crown court. The strike is due to commence on 5 September, coinciding with the announcement of the new Conservative party leader.
Liz Truss has expressed that she will consider triggering Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol if she were to be successful in her leadership campaign. Article 16 provides ‘safeguarding measures’ that entitle the UK or the EU to suspend any part of the agreement. It does not, however, dismantle the Protocol in its entirety. Rather, triggering the article would provide an alternative to other suggestions which propose primary legislation to deem it necessary that the Government not comply with its existing obligations under the agreement. Triggering the article would exhaust the legal options the UK has before following through on this threat to discard the agreement altogether. The news comes after the EU launched a series of legal challenges against the UK’s commitment to the Protocol.
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1 October 2013 by Martin Downs
Re B-S (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146 – Read judgment
is the latest Judgment of the Court of Appeal on non-consensual adoption since the Supreme Court authorized a closer scrutiny of first instance decisions In re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Threshold Criteria) [2013] UKSC 33, [2013] 1 WLR 1911 (see comment by Rosalind English here)
It is also the most authoritative (the case was allocated to Lord Dyson MR, the President of the Family Division and Black LJ) and uses to strong language about the current inattention to Human Rights in care and adoption proceedings.
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3 May 2015 by Martin Downs
Erlam et al v. Rahman et al, Richard Mawrey QC, April 2015, judgment here
The Guardian has reported that Lutfur Rahman, the former directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets is “exploring the possibility” of judicially reviewing the judgment of the Election Commissioner, Richard Mawrey QC declaring his 2014 election void and barring him from standing in the mandated repeat of the poll.
The only surprise is the qualified nature of the statement as his website had already announced his decision to appeal two days before. This site also directs readers to a petition which describes the case as, “a politically-charged stitch up and an anti-democratic coup.” The Guardian quotes the Head of the Tower Hamlets branch of UNITE as describing the judgment as “an undemocratic assault on the people of Tower Hamlets” which was both “racist” and “Islamophobic”.
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The New Zealand Parliament seems about to drop that country’s commitment to the rule of law from the Act underpinning the judicial branch. Retiring Supreme Court judge (and former Solicitor-General) Sir John McGrath thinks that’s worrying. He’s right. There’s still time for ex-pat Kiwis to lobby the Minister of Justice.
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