We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience. If you continue to use our website we will take this to mean that you agree to our use of cookies. If you want to find out more, please view our cookie policy. Accept and Hide [x]
“Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally, wickedly taken away. Victims are shot or stabbed. Less often they are strangled or suffocated or beaten to death. Rarely they are poisoned, pushed off high buildings, drowned or set alight. Then there are the many who are killed by dangerous drivers, or corporate gross negligence. There are a lot of ways you can kill someone. I know because I’ve seen some of them at close quarters”
These are the words of Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC in the preface to her book Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey”. Until recently Wendy was a judge at the Old Bailey, trying mainly allegations of murder and other homicides. She practised as a barrister for thirty two years, then sat as a full-time judge until she retired earlier this year. Because she no longer sits as a judge she was able to publish this fascinating book which has been described in reviews as describes the book as a “novel”. And indeed it is, a series of interlinked dramatic human stories leading to a close. She writes with great clarity about the technical processes of the law, and the implications of these for the people before her in Court.
In Episode 166 Rosalind English talks to Wendy Joseph about the human stories that are played out in the Old Bailey.
Voting for the Northern Ireland Assembly took place on Thursday 5 May. This year, for the first time, Sinn Fein looks set to win a majority of the seats. Whether the Democratic Unionist Party agrees to the power sharing arrangement where it is relegated to second place remains to be seen. What continues to be hotly debated is the Northern Ireland Protocol, put in place to avoid a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and Ireland which of course is still part of the EU single market.
But the Protocol isn’t only about trade. Under Article 2 the UK government has made an important commitment regarding the rights of Northern Ireland’s citizens to equality, non-discrimination, transparency and a range of other rights protected under European Union law. Article of the 2 Protocol is a very new provision, applying the acquis communitaire of the CJEU to Northern Ireland, even though NI is part of post Brexit EU.
In our latest episode Rosalind English meets UKHRB Northern Ireland correspondent Anurag Deb in Belfast two days after the elections to discuss what this EU rights provision means for the citizens of Northern Ireland.
In Episode 162 Clare Ciborowska and Richard Ager, both family law experts from the Brighton Annexe of 1 Crown Row, talk about the difficult subject of reproductive coercion where such allegations arise in child contact cases. Fact finding hearings, Scott schedules, safeguarding enquiries and risk assessments are proceedings about children’s interests: how is the court to assess and weigh allegations of reproductive coercion and control, where the victims of such abuse are reluctant to repeat the trauma by reliving the details.
Episode 161: Just days before Russia resigned from the Council of Europe, the Centre of European Law at King’s College London held a rapid reaction seminar considering what role can EU law play in the current conflict in Ukraine. The distinguished panel, chaired by King’s College Reader in Law Oana Stefan, included Professor Takis Tridimas, Professor of European Law at KCL, Roman Petrov, Head of the International and European Law Department at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla, and others. We are very grateful to King’s College for allowing Law Pod UK to summarise the main points made by the experts and raise the question: does EU law present any potential way of this quagmire?
The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, is recognised as one of the best law schools in the world. It recently launched its MSc Law and Professional Practice.
Barely two weeks after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, the Economic Crime Bill was rushed through the House of Commons. This one of the measures this country has taken to cleanse itself of “dirty money” from Russia and other countries by setting up a register of overseas entities and their beneficial owners and requiring overseas entities who own land to disclose their identities. In Episode 160 Rosalind English talks to Oliver Bullough, a journalist who has lived and worked throughout the former Soviet Union. His latest book, Butler to the World, makes a forceful point about how Britain has become a servant to all comers as long as they pay enough. Not just the banks and estate agents; lawyers are complicit too, in his view:
We have essentially given their oligarchs a back door to a fair dispute resolution process that they can deprive their fellow citizens of
Will these new legislative measures work? Only if our enforcement agencies are properly resourced, says Bullough. Just four “unexplained wealth orders” have been made since they were introduced by the Teresa May government in 2018. Perhaps it takes a crisis like the current one to give this legislation some force.
“A Decent Death” is the title of an article written by former Court of Appeal judge Stephen Sedley, and published in the London Review of Books, to which Sir Sedley is a frequent contributor.
In Episode 158 of Law Pod UK, Rosalind English considers the points made by Sir Stephen in his erudite and forthright column with Trevor Moore, Chair of the assisted dying campaign My Death, My Decision.
With clips from Sir Stephen’s presentation of his talk, we consider the contradictions in the law which still renders assisted dying a criminal offence, but allowed Coronavirus restrictions to be lifted to enable people to travel to end their lives at Dignitas in Switzerland; the stressful possibility faced by relatives returning from Switzerland that they are at risk of being prosecuted under the 1961 Suicide Act, and the constant buck-passing of reforms to this Act between the courts and Parliament.
As Sir Stephen commented in his talk, the “historical anathema”, of punishing either unsuccessful suicides or their families, lives on in the undifferentiated crime of assisting a person to commit suicide.
The present-day offence fails – signally – to differentiate between the intervener who, out of self-interest or perversion, helps to ensure that a suicide attempt succeeds, and the individual who, out of compassion, gives a rational fellow being the help he or she needs to end a life that has become medically unbearable.
For those of you who have listened to this episode, here is another reflection from Sir Stepen, on the obligation on family members returning from Switzerland, to protect themselves from prosecution under the Suicide Act by reporting themselves to the police.
On self-incrimination, I think there’s possibly more to be said. The senior police officer or crown prosecutor whose desk the case reaches may be personally (even doctrinally) hostile and decide – armed now with a full ‘confession’ given in the hope of clemency under the DPP’s policy – to prosecute. In that event there is no defence of compassion; the jury may have to convict. I find this a terrifying scenario.
In the latest episode of Law Pod UK – number 157 – Emma-Louise Fenelon speaks to Jon Metzer about some of the most significant cases of last year. This episode covers:
In our latest episode I and co-presenter Emma-Louise Fenelon have selected and put together some of our favourite snippets from the past year. This episode ranges from Artificial Intelligence, the government’s abandon with Henry VIII powers, to vicarious trauma in lawyers dealing with traumatic casework and the Henrietta Lacks claim against a pharmaceutical company for profiting from her cell lines in 1951.
This selection is by no means comprehensive and we’ve had to leave many deserving episodes out in the interests of brevity. For those wanting to keep abreast of their CPD requirements or just after a good informative listen, go back to some of our episodes on Medical and Inquest Law, Loss of Chance in clinical negligence, and “Historical” Crimes: Ireland’s unmarried mothers and their children.
We have been building on our impressive audience figures around the world, with listeners in over twenty countries including the United States, New Zealand, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. In the summer of 2021 we passed the half a million listeners mark.
As we settle into the new year we have plenty of interesting names and topics in the pipeline for you. Law Pod UK is one of the longest running legal podcasts from barristers’ chambers in the UK and we have commanded sufficient authority and respect to gain access to big names, such as the founder of the Magnitsky Act, Bill Browder, and former chief prosecutor for England and Wales Nazir Afzal OBE.
In this week’s episode of Law Pod UK Rosalind English reports from the UK Bar Council’s 19th Annual Law Reform Lecture, exploring the role of law reform in the context of climate change. You will hear excerpts from the speeches given by Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the UN and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, and Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill, a former UK Supreme Court judge.
State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation (Dutch: De Staat Der Nederlanden v. Stichting Urgenda), Supreme Court of the Netherlands, 20 December 2019 (unofficial translation here)
Juliana, et al. v. United States of America, et al., 947 F.3d 1159 (9th Cir. 2020)
Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell plc (26 May 20212. This ongoing claim is based on the Urgenda decision, which found that the Dutch government’s inadequate action on climate change violated a duty of care to its citizens).
In the latest Episode of Law Pod UK Rosalind English talks to Robert Kellar QC of 1 Crown Office row about the proposed reforms to the regulation of doctors, nurses, opticians, chiropractors and a range of other professionals in the world of healthcare. It’s particularly important to allow regulators to react to unexpected challenges, as we’ve found since the recent Covid-19 emergency.
As Robert explains, the proposals directed at overhauling the system of professional healthcare regulation aim to introduce greater consistency across the regulatory bodies (we have an impressive nine organisations at the moment). Whether this and other proposals to increase the autonomy of these bodies will increase public safety whilst still respecting practitioners’ rights remains to be seen.
Here are the links to the Government White Paper and the Consultation Paper discussed in Episode 151:
In Episode 150 Rosalind English talks to Professor Ryan Abbott about the recent ruling in the Court of Appeal on whether an invention made by Artificial Intelligence without a traditional human inventor is entitled to a patent. The Court (with one of the judges dissenting) said no.
Ryan Abbott is the author of The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law published last year and he has published widely on issues associated with law and technology, health law, and intellectual property in leading legal, medical, and scientific books and journals. He is also a licensed physician, attorney, and acupuncturist in the United States, as well as a solicitor advocate in England and Wales.
He is also architect of this important test case. We discuss the obstacles faced by the inventor of an AI set out in the Patents Act 1977 and speculate whether there needs to be a root and branch review of patent eligibility, given that so many inventions are produced by AI across the world.
Law Pod UK returns after the summer break with Episode 149: a fascinating interview with Special Advocate Angus McCullough QC on Closed Material Proceedings where evidence is so secretive the SAs cannot communicate directly with their clients. Anyone interested in drilling further down into the subject please go to Angus’s two posts on UKHRB: “Secret Justice”: An Oxymoron and the Overdue Review” and “Secret Justice – The Insiders’ View”, with links to the evolution of CMPs, the relevant legislation, the review process now under way and the submissions that Special Advocates have made to Sir Duncan Ouseley, the independent reviewer of this process: The Ouseley Review – SAs-Submission.
And you will notice a few changes: different signature tune, different voiceover: our very own head of Chambers, Richard Booth QC. Also welcome to our new producer Philip at lawpodcasts.co.uk, who’s done a great job taking over the task of delivering this podcast from Simon Jarvis of Whistledown.
We have a terrific line up of guests following Angus for the Autumn.
This blog is maintained for information purposes only. It is not intended to be a source of legal advice and must not be relied upon as such. Blog posts reflect the views and opinions of their individual authors, not of chambers as a whole.
Our privacy policy can be found on our ‘subscribe’ page or by clicking here.
This blog is run by
Recent comments