Justice Matters

Siobhan Grey discusses the Tate Modern and Gray’s Inn symposium on voyeurism, privacy, censorship and surveillance 

The curtain has now fallen on “Exposed” the Tate Modern’s provocative photographic exhibition. It skilfully captured the political and cultural zeitgeist through an exploration of the themes of voyeurism, privacy and surveillance and raised important ethical questions about the taking of illicit or covert photographs. 

John Kampfner sums up the current arguments on libel law reform 

Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, is what Tony Blair might have called a feral beast turned hunted prey. A former reporter, he opted for politics in 2001. Since then he has been a doughty human rights campaigner. It was his question to the Justice Secretary in October 2009 about the injunction obtained following publication of the Minton Report on the dumping by Trafigura of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast which brought home to Parliament the activities of claimant legal firms in getting “super-injunctions”. 

Tony Shaw QC and Clive Freedman discuss the draft Guidelines on Information Security and Government Work 

Jonathan Herring claims that it is a divorce lawyer’s world 

Stephen Hockman QC argues the case for a written constitution 

Later this year anyone who is arrested in Europe will be able to find out about their legal rights – in their own language – online. Amanda Pinto QC discusses what the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe project involves 

The European Commission has decided to provide a pan-European project enabling those who come into contact with the criminal justice system in another member state to find out about their rights in their own language. 

Is it possible to challenge extradition requests based on the right to family life following Norris, asks Abigail Bright 

Nobody has yet successfully challenged an extradition request made under a bilateral extradition treaty on the grounds that the extradition would breach the person’s right to respect for private and family life, as guaranteed by art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, within the territory of the respondent state. In Norris v Government of the United States of America (No 2) [2010] UKSC 9 the Supreme Court – unanimously – rejected Ian Norris’ argument that extradition to the USA would be incompatible with his right to a private and family life in the UK. Nevertheless, Norris provides overdue guidance on when such a challenge may succeed.  

The Law Reform Committee wants to know which areas of law reform it should consider on behalf of the Bar, say Dan Stacey and Eleena Misra 

Defendants are now required to provide written notice of the witnesses they seek to call at trial. Monica Stevenson considers the likely pitfalls 

Over the last decade criminal practitioners have been greeted with a deluge of legislation, the effect of which has been to increase case workloads at the same time as the government has panicked over the cost of paying lawyers to deal with it all.  Continuing the trend is the new requirement that defendants provide written notification of those witnesses they intend to call at trial. This change is ushered in by virtue of s 6(c) of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 (“CPIA”) (as amended by s 34 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (“CJA 2003”)) which entered the statute books seven years ago but only came into force on 1 May 2010. It is accompanied by regulations, the Notification of Intention to Call Defence Witnesses (Time Limits) Regulations 2010, SI 2010/214 (“the 2010 Regulations”), and a Code of Practice for Conducting Interviews of Witnesses Notified by the Accused (“the Code”). 

Are the criminal courts the best place for intellectual property owners to protect their rights, asks Alex Stein 

In January 2010 Alan Ellis was unanimously acquitted of a charge of conspiracy to defraud based on his activities as creator and supervisor of the peer-to–peer (“P2P”) file sharing website oink.cd. He was the first person to be prosecuted for such activities in the UK. The website which operated between 2004 and 2007 utilised BitTorrent technology allowing members to share files (mainly music but with some books) between themselves. The site was by far the most popular UK based file sharing site. It generated around £150,000 in donations, attracted in the region of 600,000 members and facilitated 21 million downloads. Ellis, who was only 21 when he started the site, ran it from his bedroom in shared student digs.