human rights
21 November 2011 by Richard Mumford
This is a case in which Philip Havers QC of 1 Crown Office Row appeared for the General Dental Council; he is not the author of this post.
The General Dental Council v Savery and others [2011] EWHC 3011 (Admin) – Read judgment
Mr Justice Sales in the High Court has ruled that the General Dental Council’s (GDC) use and disclosure of the dental records of fourteen patients of a registered dentist who was the subject of investigation was lawful.
The court also offered general guidance about how the GDC may proceed (particularly by reference to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to privacy and family life) when it wishes to investigate allegations against a dentist of impairment of fitness to practise by reference to confidential patient records in the absence of consent from the patients in question.
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13 November 2011 by Graeme Hall
Sumption
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 Graeme Hall
In the news
Last Friday was the deadline for submissions to the Commission on a Bill of Rights consultation – please send your submissions to 1crownofficerow@gmail.com and we will publish them in a roundup later this week.
Is my presumed intention inferred from a fair imputation? How naïve!
Domestically, Jonathan Sumption QC, an at-some-time-in-the-future Supreme Court Justice, has been described by Joshua Rozenberg as demonstrating a certain ‘naivety’ when, in delivering the FA Mann Lecture, he argued that judges are too interventionist in policy decisions, and that parliamentary scrutiny is generally a sufficient safeguard to protect ‘the public interest’.
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8 November 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Commission on a Bill of Rights consultation on whether we need one (a bill, not the Commission) closes this Friday 11 November.
The consultation document is here: Do we need a UK Bill of Rights. You can respond by email or to the Commission’s address. Our posts on the commission are here and listed below for background – you can also read our existing Bill of Rights, from 1689, here, the Magna Carta here and the Human Rights Act here.
I intend to collate responses and summarise them once the deadline passes, so please feel free to email your responses (ideally as an MS Word document or PDF) to 1crownofficerow@gmail.com .
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7 November 2011 by Melina Padron
Sir Nicolas Bratza
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
Family Justice Review
Last week the final report of the Family Justice Review (on Family Law) was published. The Family Lore blog has provided us with a summary of the key findings and a few comments on the review (so did Adam Wagner). See also the Pink Tape blog’s post on the topic.
Tackling the problem of delay seems to be the heart of the Family Justice Review’s proposals, evidenced by this piece, written by David Norgrove, who chaired the Family Justice Review, about the need to tackle the problem of delay in the family justice system when it comes to child protection cases. Norgrove says such delays are damaging to children and suggests, amongst other things, that children’s welfare should not be trumped by parents’ rights in these circumstances.
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30 October 2011 by Graeme Hall
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 Graeme Hall
In the news
The Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights have featured prominently in the legal news this week. Let’s find out why.
The Supreme Court’s ‘terrible twos’?
The Supreme Court has become a toddler, celebrating its second birthday last week. The Guardian has produced a video interview with the justices as well as an article with some of the Justices who attempt to demystify the Courts’ processes. But will its birthday mark the beginning of the court’s ‘terrible- twos’?
Lady Hale, the only female Justice, has certainly been vocal of late. Calling for more diversity amongst the judiciary, Hale argues that we need to “think of the very able people that are doing … less visible forms of practice, rather than just thinking about the top QCs”; representing a possible contrast to the other male Justices who argue that promoting diversity over merit would be a “great mistake”.
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25 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
At around the same time that 79 Conservative Party MPs were rebelling over a European referendum, the Conservative Attorney General was giving a very interesting speech entitled European Convention on Human Rights – Current Challenges.
In a month in which the Justice Secretary called part of the Home Secretary’s speech on human rights “laughable” and “childlike”, Dominic Grieve presented a refreshingly grown-up argument on human rights reform.
The speech is worth reading in full. Grieve presented the Government’s arguments, most of them already well-known, on why the Human Rights Act needs to be replaced by a Bill of Rights. There were no big surprises; his central theme, subsidiarity, that is the European Court giving member states more space to set their local social policy, is something which the Justice Secretary has spoken about – see my post on his evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee.
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24 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Commission on a Bill of Rights consultation is closing on 11 November 2011, which is two weeks on Friday. If you trying to decide what you think about the consultation paper (the paper itself is unlikely to help much, as it doesn’t provide any options), then there are two excellent events coming up which may help.
The UCL Institute for Human Rights Debate, Does Britain Need a Bill of Rights?
Free event, this Wednesday 26 October: Book here , Registration from 6:30pm, Event starts at 7pm, featuring
- Chris Bryant MP – Shadow Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform,
- Aileen Kavanagh – University of Oxford,
- Colm O’Cinneide – UCL,
- Saladin Meckled-Garcia – UCL Institute for Human Rights. Chaired by
- Joshua Rozenberg, Presenter of the BBC’s Law in Action
A Bill of Rights for the UK? – Human Rights Lawyers Association
Free event, Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 6pm – 7.30pm, BPP Law Centre, 68-70 Red Lion Street, London WC1R 4NY – info here
- Chair Madeleine Colvin, Immigration Judge, Human Rights Consultant, Doughty Street Chambers
- Speaker: Professor Colin Harvey, Head of the Law School, Queen’s University Belfast and Northern Ireland Human Rights Commissioner 2005-2011
- Discussant Jonathan Cooper, HRLA Chair
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24 October 2011 by Melina Padron
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:
Privacy and the media
Last week Lord Judge LCJ gave a speech on “press regulation” at Justice’s Annual Human Rights Law Conference.
His speech was an unusual one, given that judges generally refrain from commenting on the important issues of the moment. Lord Judge was supportive of Lord Justice Leveson and of the Press Complaints Commission, both targets of criticism in the context of the inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press and the Leveson inquiry.
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20 October 2011 by Melina Padron
Welcome back to the human rights roundup, a regular bulletin of everything we have not 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
In the news
The UK Supreme Court under the spotlight
Last week the UKSC’s constitutional status, message, work and composition were the focus of various articles.
Roger Masterman and Jo Murkens tried to establish what kind of court is the UK Supreme Court, with particular reference to its constitutional status. Amongst many interesting points, Masterman and Murkens believe that as a result of some of its own features, the Court has begun cementing its place as a constitutional actor of its own right.
Richard Cornes, for the Guardian, believes that the most interesting message the Supreme Court is sending has gone almost unheard. Cornes argues this is the result of a combination of the obstacles to the efforts to make the Court more transparent, and the quality of coverage of the Court’s work. In particular, Cornes believes readers of mainstream media (he cites the Daily Mail, the Times and the Guardian as examples) will not have the same impression of the Supreme Court as the person who follows the UK Human Rights blog’s Twitter feed or checks the Guardian Law or Times Law pages online.
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10 October 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
In the news
Hissing “Catgate” / “Catflap”
As you will probably know, the Home Secretary Theresa May has been criticised for erroneously claiming that an illegal immigrant avoided deportation because of his pet cat. The episode came to be known as “Catgate”/”Catflap”* and was widely covered both in the mainstream press and the legal blogs; our blog in particular posted four articles. Here are just some of the many articles about the incident (or related to it):
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5 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated x 2 | What can we learn from yesterday’s gaff by the Home Secretary Theresa May involving Maya the cat?
First, when referring to a legal judgment in a speech make sure you get the outcome right. Particularly when prefaced by “I am not making this up”. Secondly, if said speech is being broadcast live, there are plenty of lawyers on Twitter who will enjoy nothing more than tracking down the judgment, reading it and exposing the fact that you have got it wrong.
These lessons are important. But they relate to any amusing but forgettable political gaff. There is, however, a third lesson. There has been for a number of years a trend of wilfully or recklessly misreporting human rights cases. This trend is not just mischievous; it threatens to do real damage to our legal system.
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3 October 2011 by Melina Padron
Leap back
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
In the news
An eventful week in Europe
Advocate-General Trstenjak has issued her opinion in NS v SSHD, a case currently pending before the Court of Justice of the EU. As reported by Cian Murphy for the Guardian, the case involves an Afghan asylum seeker who arrived in the EU via Greece before making his way to the UK to seek refuge.
Under the Dublin regulation it is for the EU country of first entry to consider the asylum claim, so the UK sought to return the claimant to Greece. The claimant then challenged his transfer by claiming that Greece was unable to process his case and that return would violate his fundamental rights. If he is successful, no asylum seeker could be returned to Greece under current conditions. In her opinion, AG Trstenjak made recommendations on a number of points, including the following:
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27 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
In A.A. v. the United Kingdom, a recent case involving the deportation of a young Nigerian man, the Court faced, once again, the question whether relationships between adult children and parents/siblings amount to family life in deportation cases. The Court’s Fourth Section did not give a clear answer to this question. The 24-year-old applicant resided with his mother and did not have children of his own [also see Rosalind English’s post].
In this post, I take a quick look at the Fourth Section’s reasoning on this issue and try to situate it in the wider context of the Court’s deportation case law. One word of caution: this is an attempt to briefly look at one specific question the Court asks to decide whether the deportation has interfered with an applicant’s right to respect for her family life. Do the ties invoked by the applicant constitute family life within the meaning of Article 8 § 1? To be more specific, do relationships between adult children and parents/siblings amount to family life in deportation cases?
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5 September 2011 by Graeme Hall
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 Graeme Hall
In the news
Monstering of the innocent?
Once again the Press finds itself in the spotlight, this time over the reporting of former suspect Rebecca Leighton and the deaths at Stepping Hill Hospital. Obiter J sets out the charges against Leighton and also the tests which prosecutors must meet for charges to remain in place. Describing the test as “quite remarkable” given the gravity of the charges, as well as noting the “immense damage” which has undoubtedly been done to Leighton’s reputation, Obiter J predicts a complex human rights challenge to the police’s conduct and calls for Parliament to take a closer look at the existing powers for charging people.
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24 August 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Human Rights Act has been blamed for many things, but recent suggestions that it caused a series of riots were tenuous by any standards.
A major problem with human rights law is that there is so much disinformation in the public domain. Thankfully, the British Institute on Human Rights is going on tour to try to correct the balance. The organisation is visiting 16 venues around the UK from September to December, seeking to answer the following questions:
What’s the role of human rights in a period of cut backs to public services? What is the role of human rights in protecting the vulnerable? Do human rights offer an effective tool for people wishing to challenge the impact of service cuts or changes? How do we make sure we balance one person’s rights against the interests of society as a whole?
The full list of venues and dates here and you can book here.
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