human rights
30 June 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular LS Lowry matchstick panorama of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Daniel Isenberg.
With the continuing progress of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill through Parliament, focus was turned this week to the same issue in the USA. Meanwhile, it was extra-judicial scrutiny being meted upon Chris Grayling’s money-making proposals, and the Sun was censured by the PCC over an EU-ECtHR mix-up.
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23 June 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular grape and strawberry fondu 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. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Sarina Kidd.
This week, important figures criticise the legal aid reforms, the MoD may have to watch their back, surveillance activities threaten to challenge a number of laws and secret ‘justice’ is slammed once again.
by Sarina Kidd
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16 June 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular sweet and salted extra large popcorn box 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. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Daniel Isenberg.
Not our own proposed “Snooper’s Charter” getting the civil liberties groups excited this week, but the all-sensing eyes and ears of the American government. Meanwhile, Europe publishes a useful handbook on asylum and immigration issues; whilst the Strasbourg Court cuts down its growing backlog of cases.
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14 June 2013 by Guest Contributor
ZZ v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EUECJ C-300/11 – Read judgment
The European Court of Justice has, in recent days, handed down a judgment that hits several hot buttons: UK immigration law, EU human rights, secret evidence, and suspicions of terrorism. In ZZ the Court has had to rule on the use of secret evidence before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Mr ZZ is an Algerian citizen. However, of crucial importance to his case is that he is also a French citizen, and therefore as an EU citizen, he is entitled to travel to and live the UK. Mr ZZ’s wife is a UK citizen and he was resident in the UK for a over a decade until 2005. In that year he travelled to Algeria but, upon return, was refused admission to the UK on national security grounds.
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9 June 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular Royal Variety Show 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.
This week, there was a flurry of comment and critique on the Ministry of Justice’s paper, ‘Transforming Legal Aid’, human rights abuses both past and present are in the spotlight and there have been some notable decisions from the courts.
by Sarina Kidd
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2 June 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular chocolate selection box 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.
Much of the news this week relating to the media: tweeting, printing and everything in between.Chris Grayling’s thriftiness also maintains the interests of commentators, academics and lawyers; and cases involving the freedom of religion remain at the forefront of the ECtHR as the Strasbourg Court reforms.
by Daniel Isenberg
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29 May 2013 by Matthew Flinn
R (on the application of Sandiford) v Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs [2013] 168 (Admin) – read judgment
On 22 April 2013 the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in refusing to pay for a lawyer to assist Lindsay Sandiford as she faces the death penalty for drug offences in Indonesia. Last Wednesday, they handed down the reasons for their decision.
On 19 May 2012 Lindsay Sandiford was arrested at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali following the discovery of almost five kilograms of cocaine in the lining of her suitcase. A number of southeast Asian countries take a notoriously hard line on drugs offences, and following her conviction on 19 December 2012, Ms Sandiford was sentenced to death. Many media outlets have reported that in Indonesia, death sentences are generally carried out by a firing squad.
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26 May 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular tasting menu 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.
With an upcoming anniversary, the role of the Lord Chancellor (and, of course, his reforms) has been under scrutiny. Further, the new Defamation Act is looked at in more detail, civil liberties are abused and war crimes resurface in a number of ways. And, the gay marriage bill continues on its tumultuous journey to the House of Lords.
by Sarina Kidd
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22 May 2013 by Guest Contributor
Doogan and Wood v. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board [2013] CSIH 36 – read judgment here and Alasdair Henderson’s commentary here
It is easy to become complacent about women’s reproductive rights in mainland Britain. Compared to our Irish neighbours, women here are able to access their chosen contraceptive, abortion and maternity services with relative ease. When Savita Halappanavar died after she was refused an abortion in Galway, commentators lamented a system where a woman could be told by healthcare staff that she couldn’t have an abortion because Ireland is a Catholic country. We imagined that such events could not happen here. A recent judgment of the Scottish Inner House of the Court of Session (the Scottish Court of Appeal) shakes that belief. Of most concern is that the court failed to engage with the human rights implications of its decision.
Our abortion law is found in the Abortion Act 1967. Section 1 makes abortion lawful only when it has been authorised by two doctors who attest that continuing the pregnancy poses a risk to a woman’s physical or mental health, or where the child would ‘suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped’. In effect, all abortions, save those for fetal abnormality, are performed on the basis that there is a threat to the woman’s physical or mental integrity as a result of pregnancy. Section 4 excuses a person from ‘participating in any treatment’ under the Act if they express a conscientious objection to abortion. As the Abortion Rights campaign points out, the law gives doctors control over women’s informed choices about their pregnancy that can lead to damaging delays in accessing abortion services.
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22 May 2013 by Guest Contributor
Much of the House of Lords debate surrounding yesterday’s Second Reading of the Care and Support Bill focused on seeking solutions to complex issues around the future provision of care. Additionally, as several peers flagged, the Bill also provides a timely opportunity to clarify which bodies have legal obligations to uphold protections under the Human Rights Act. Baroness Campbell noted “those who receive their care not from a public authority but from a private body lack the full protection of the Human Rights Act…[This] is a loophole that must be closed.”
What loophole?
Section 6 of the Human Rights Act essentially creates a legal duty to respect, protect and fulfil certain human rights (drawn from the European Convention on Human Rights). This duty is placed on public authorities and those performing “public functions”. The second type of body – those performing public functions – has proved somewhat awkward in practice, particularly in relation to those who receive care services.
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20 May 2013 by Adam Wagner
The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is back before Parliament today for the “Report Stage”. The latest version of the Bill is here, updated explanatory notes here, and the full list of proposed amendments here. Predictably, the amendments are the focus of much controversy.
I have written a new article for the New Statesman on some of the myths and realities surrounding the debate – you can read it here. It’s all a bit complicated, as you might expect.
Our previous coverage is linked to below. Hopefully, party politics won’t end up derailing this important bill. As the New Yorker recently predicted:
One day, not long from now, it will be hard to remember what worried people so much about gay and lesbian couples committing themselves to marriage.
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19 May 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular legal melting pot 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.
Not the right to life, but the right to die dominates the human rights headlines this week, with separate litigation in Strasbourg and the Strand. Commentary abounds on not just the ECHR’s role in domestic law, but how proposed reforms comply with EU law, particularly on the immigration front. Finally, a wide range of human rights approaches to much of the coalition’s plans for this Parliament.
by Daniel Isenberg
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16 May 2013 by Guest Contributor
One of the most contentious proposals in the Consultation Paper on the transforming legal aid is the removal of client choice in criminal cases. Under the proposals contracts for the provision of legal aid will be awarded to a limited number of firms in an area. The areas are similar to the existing CPS areas. The Green Paper anticipates that there will be four or five such providers in each area. Thus the county of Kent, for example, will have four or five providers in an area currently served by fifty or so legal aid firms. Each area will have a limited number providers that will offer it is argued economies of scale.
In order to ensure that this arrangement is viable the providers will be effectively guaranteed work by stripping the citizen of the right to choose a legal aid lawyer in criminal cases. Under the new scheme every time a person needs advice they will be allocated mechanically by the Legal Aid Agency to one of the new providers. It may not be the same firm the person has used before. The citizen will therefore not be able to build up a relationship with a solicitor. From a human rights perspective this, of course, begs the question would the removal of choice be compatible with the ECHR?
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13 May 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular chocolate selection gift box 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.
This week, the Government announced plans to curb Article 8 of the ECHR, Grayling continues to cause controversy with his reforms of both the Criminal Justice System and of judicial review, and Qatada may soon be leaving us for pastures new.
by Sarina Kidd
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6 May 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular assortment 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.
Not a particularly noisy week on the human rights front, but some interesting summaries and analyses. The House of Commons Library has compiled a summary of UK cases before Strasbourg since 1975, as well as on the prisoner voting issue. Some commentary on the issue of secret justice, in particular the role of the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and the powers of the court of protection in contempt proceedings.
by Daniel Isenberg
In the News
Legal Aid
The Legal Aid cuts are set to continue – see Adam Wagner’s post on the latest consultation, which closes on 4 June 2013. As with previous consultations, we will be collating responses so please send us yours (to email click here).
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