human rights
16 February 2011 by Adam Wagner
Law by crowd
The new Protection of Freedoms Bill has become the first proposed law to be opened to public comments via the internet. This seemingly small technological advance could have very exciting effects.
The comments system works just like a blog post. Any member of the public can leave comments on any particular provision of the draft law. The deadline for comments is 7th March.
The Prime Minister says that the Public Reading Stage, which is touchingly in “beta”, will “improve the level of debate and scrutiny of bills by giving everyone the opportunity to go online and offer their views” on new laws.” “That”, he suggests “means better laws – and more trust in our politics.”
He might just be right.
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9 February 2011 by Rosalind English
Bringing Rights Back Home is the latest policy document to address the tension between judges and politicians over public policy with human rights implications.
Within hours of publication of the report, a hard-hitting academic paper put together by the political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, criticism started pouring in, and there will be no doubt more huffing and puffing to come.
But before these lofty admonitions stifle them, it is worth considering some of the paper’s objections and proposals. These are legitimate points made in a political debate which has been masquerading for years as a legal one. The document is essentially uncontroversial, in legal terms.
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2 February 2011 by Rosalind English
ZH (Tanzania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] UKSC 4 (1 February 2011) – Read judgment
This case (see yesterday’s summary) is illustrative of two misconceptions about rights that we are all in thrall to from time to time.
One is that there is a fundamental hierarchy of human rights which allows certain interests to prevail over others in all situations; the other is that this hierarchy is determined by considerations that are morally and politically neutral. A prime example of this kind of principle is the idea of the “overriding rights of the child”, a consideration with a perfectly orthodox role in family law, but one whose application to human rights as a whole is questionable.
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26 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Home Office has published its long-awaited review of counter-terrorism and security powers. The review findings and recommendations are here.
Other key documents can be found via the following links:
The Home Office’s summary of the key recommendations is reproduced below:
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6 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The government is soon to reveal the future of control orders, controversial anti-terrorism measure which have been repeatedly found by the courts to infringe human rights. But what are they? And why have they caused such trouble since they were introduced?
What are control orders?
Control orders are an anti-terrorism power which allows the secretary of state to impose strict conditions on a terrorist suspect (the ‘controlee’).
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3 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
Stephen Kinzer, a New York Times journalist and author, has written a scathing article on the efforts of international human rights groups on Guardian.co.uk. The article has generated controversy but in fact keys into a long-standing debate with important implications for the future of the international human rights movement.
The Kinzer article has predictably generated significant debate, with over 300 reader comments so far. Many of the commenters are critical, as is to be expected.
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29 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Al Hassan-Daniel & Anor v HM Revenue and Customs & Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 1443 (15 December 2010) – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the family of a drug smuggler who died after being poisoned by 116 swallowed cocaine packages can bring a human rights claim against the state, despite his criminal behaviour.
The decision will anger those who say that the Human Rights Act is no more than a villains’ charter, doing more to protect the rights of “asylum seeker death drivers” and the murderers of headmasters. However, the court has done no more than confirm the basic principle that human rights are for all, not just for people we like.
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22 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Lots of judgements are being released this week as judges tie up their business in time for the holidays. Here is a quick roundup of human rights cases.
More trouble for the LSC tender process
- Hereward & Foster Llp & Anor v The Legal Services Commission [2010] EWHC 3370 (Admin) (21 December 2010) A number of different organisations have attempted to judicially review the much criticised Legal Services Commission tender of publicly funded work, initially the Community Law Partnership and most notably (and successfully), the Law Society. In this case a solicitor has had its permission application refused regarding the LSC’s immigration tender as it was out of time, but the court did find that the “supervisor attendance criteria” imposed by the LSC indirectly discriminated against women as in privileging round-the-clock service, it prejudiced part-time over full-time workers (see para 62 for a summary of the judge’s conclusions). So a partial (moral) victory for the solicitors, with the immigration tender process looking in trouble and vulnerable to future challenges on indirect discrimination grounds.
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17 December 2010 by Catriona Murdoch
Secretary of State for the Home Department v DD (Afghanistan) [2010] EWCA Civ 1407 (10 December 2010) – Read judgment
It is a sometimes controversial aspect of immigration law that asylum seekers facing a real risk of persecution will nevertheless be denied the protection of the Refugee Convention, through the application of Article 1F of that Convention. One of the bases for exclusion from protection is Article 1F(c), which applies where a person “has been guilty of acts contrary to the principles of the United Nations”. How does a court decide such cases?
The Court of Appeal has reversed the decision of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) in a case involving an Afghani asylum seeker. The AIT had ruled that Article 1F did not apply, and so DD was entitled to refugee status. The AIT’s conclusion was reached despite DD admitting a history of involvement with organisations engaged in violent activities against the Afghan Goverment and UN-mandated forces: Jamiat-e-Islami, the Taliban, and Hizb-e-Islami. The Home Secretary’s appeal was allowed and the case was remitted to the AIT for a limited reconsideration.
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14 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
You may have noticed that we have started to provide a bit more detail in the “Latest news” and “Case law” sections on the right sidebar.
This is so we can provide quicker news updates, and can notify readers of cases before we have had a chance to post on them in more detail. You can access the full list (RSS – for those who know what that means) of news updates here, or case law here.
The recent cases are:
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14 December 2010 by Maria Roche
R v Khan [2010] EWCA Crim 2880 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has increased the sentences of two human traffickers from 3 to 4 years and upheld the 3 year sentence of a third trafficker (despite her mental health problems) for systematic and well-planned exploitation of trafficked restaurant workers.
The offenders, Shahnawaz Ali Khan, Raza Ali Khan and their mother Perveen Khan, were family restaurateurs in Harrogate. Over a period of four years they recruited nine men from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent to work in the restaurant. All the workers entered the country legally on non-EEA work permits, after the offenders made assurances of good pay and working conditions to both the workers and the Home Office.
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23 November 2010 by Catriona Murdoch
Petsafe Ltd, R (on the application of) v The Welsh Ministers [2010] EWHC 2908 (Admin) (16 November 2010) – Read judgment
The High Court has ruled that a Welsh ban on the use of collars designed to administer electric shocks to cats and dogs does not breach Article 1 of the First Protocol of the ECHR or impinge upon the free movement of goods protected under European Union Law.
The Judicial Review application was brought by two interested parties, Petsafe Ltd and The Electronic Collar Manufacturers Association against the Welsh Ministers who after a lengthy consultation period dating from 2007, brought into force the Animal Welfare (Electronic Collars (Wales)) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/934) (“the 2010 Regulations”) which banned the use of electric collars. The 2010 Regulations were created under the powers conferred to the Welsh Ministers under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (“AWA 2006”). A breach of the 2010 Regulations is an offence punishable with up to 51 weeks imprisonment and/or a fine not exceeding Level 5 (£5,000).
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19 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
The best of the rest of the human rights news from the web in the past week. You can read our full list of external links here.
Legal aid cuts – some early thoughts on implications – Lawyer Watch More thoughts on the principles underlying the legal aid cuts (see our post) by Professor Richard Moorhead. Also see The cuts to legal aid are closing the law to all but those with money by Jonathan Freedland, who argues that Labour should fight the cuts “root and branch” as “These £350m of savings will come at a much greater cost, either to other public services – including the NHS, forced to pay the higher costs that come with defeat in “no win, no fee” cases – or to society as a whole.”
News of the World phone hacking investigator must give court names of clients – Inforrm: This is the latest decision relating to the long-running News of the World phone-hacking investigation.
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12 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
The best of human rights news from the web in the past week. You can read our full list of external links here.
Alternative feminist judgment: R v A (No 2) [2001] UKHL 25 – guardian.co.uk: This ‘alternative’ judgment is part of the new Feminist Judgments Project, an interesting attempt by academics, practitioners and activists to produce 23 alternative feminist judgments to a series of key cases in English law. An introductory article in the Guardian explains that the project’s aim is not to encourage judges taken an ideological viewpoint but, rather, to accept that prejudice may have coloured even the highest judges’ reasoning at various points in English legal history and see whether things could have been different. It could be said that all they are doing is replacing one form of prejudice with another.
In any case, no matter how clever our judges are – and they are very bright indeed – it must be of some relevance that at the highest level they are almost exclusively white males aged 60+. The debate over judges’ prejudices is still much more alive in the United States than it is here, but that doesn’t mean we should continue to ignore it, particularly after the passing of the Human Rights Act which means courts are ruling on increasingly sensitive social issues. This project seeks to tease out the potential of an alternative viewpoint.
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5 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
In
Updated | Today the UK courts have made two decisions in relation to radical Muslim clerics. The score card reads: Abu Hamza can keep his passport and stay (for now), but Dr Zakir Naik, an Indian preacher who was excluded from the UK by the Home Secretary in June, will remain unwelcome.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission has ruled that Abu Hamza can keep his UK passport as if a deprivation order were made, he would be made stateless, as he claimed he had already been stripped of his Egyptian citizenship. By section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981, the Secretary of State cannot make a person stateless. The UK is trying to deport him altogether, but his claim is being heard at the European Court of Human Rights (see our post).
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