Human Rights

The Law Reform Committee essay competition 2009 was won by Tom Cleaver with his essay “Modernising the Law of Markets and Fairs". Second place went to Liam Loughlin for his entry "Reforming the Law Concerning Physician Assisted Suicide". The winner of the CPE category was Thomas Hope with his entry “Bringing Some Sanity to the Insanity Defence" and runner-up CPE entry was James Hamerton-Stove with “Shifting the Burden in English Defamation Law” 

MANIFESTO FOR JUSTICE PUBLISHED 

Issued on behalf of: AdviceUK, The General Council of the Bar, ILEX, JUSTICE, Law Centres Federation, Legal Action Group, Legal Aid Practitioners Group, Liberty 

A broad and influential coalition of eight leading legal and campaigning organisations has called on politicians to put justice centre stage in the forthcoming General Election campaign. 

Publishing aManifesto for Justice, the groups – which represent consumers, lawyers and justice campaigns - have called for three principles of justice to be upheld by all those involved in the political debate. 

Desmond Browne QC argues that the law of privacy should provide equal protection to both private citizens and celebrities 

In recent months there has been much debate whether we have gone too far in protecting rights under art 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950  and along the way sacrificed too much of our freedom of expression under art 10. But whilst our new domestic law of privacy protects (perhaps even excessively) celebrities against the media, it is paradoxical that there remain concerns about the adequacy of the citizen’s protection against the State. Should not the same Convention right be protecting both? 

Lord Neuberger delivered a powerful endorsement of the value of the rule of law in diffi - cult times, in this year’s Atkin lecture. Choosing the subject of the equity of human rights, Lord Neuberger recalled Lord Atkin’s dissenting judgment in Liversidge v Anderson (1940), in which he questioned the discretionary powers of the security services to detain Robert Liversidge in Brixton prison for alleged “hostile associations”. This judgment had relevance for legislation brought in to assist the government’s current “war on terror”. 

DESMOND Browne QC, Chairman of the Bar, has spoken on the theme of ‘Human rights under threat abroad and at home’ at a fringe meeting at Labour Party Conference on Sunday. 

The meeting, organised by the Society of Labour Lawyers and the Bar Council, brought together a distinguished panel of speakers, consisting of Lord Bach, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice, Beatrice Mtetwa of the Zimbabwean Bar, and Desmond Browne QC, Chairman of the Bar. 

Debate on the future of the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA 1998”) illustrates a number of contemporary political themes.  

There is convergence – both Labour and the Conservatives invoke the spirit of the Glorious Revolution with arguments for a new Bill of Rights. There is divergence – in essence, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are for the HRA 1998 and the Conservatives against it – though all sides have their mavericks. There is an awful lot of confusion, if not wilful obfuscation. And, underneath the politics, there are, largely unacknowledged, constitutional principles that limit what can practically be done. 

David Hobart, Bar Council Chief Executive, Mark Muller QC, Bar Human Rights Committee Chair, and Robert Heslett, Law Society President, have expressed concern at reports of mass trials being held in Iran following the political unrest after the disputed June presidential elections. 

In the wake of the recent Court of Appeal interlocutory judgment giving the green light for the first trial on indictment by a judge alone, David Wolchover and Anthony Heaton-Armstrong propose some convenient and inexpensive jury tampering countermeasures 

The Northern Ireland judge-only Diplock courts for the trial of cases involving a terrorist dimension linger on, though nowadays with a much reduced throughput. But while the risk of jury intimidation and religious bias may have waned in Ulster the perceived problem of jury tampering—or “nobbling”—had supposedly increased in England and Wales to such an extent that provision was finally enacted in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (“CJA 2003”), s 44 for trials on indictment to be conducted where appropriate without a jury. 

David Hobart, Bar Council Chief Executive, Mark Muller QC, Bar Human Rights Committee Chair, and Robert Heslett, Law Society President, have expressed concern at reports of mass trials being held in Iran following the political unrest after the disputed June presidential elections. Reports indicate that lawyers have been denied access to their clients, to prosecution case documents and to knowledge of the dates of the trials (see p  iii of Bar News for further details). 

The Chief Executive of the Bar Council of England and Wales, the Chairman of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the President of the Law Society of England and Wales expressed their deep concern at reports of mass trials being held in Iran following the political unrest after the disputed June presidential elections. 

The fourth mass trial in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court began yesterday where over 100 people have been accused of crimes including rioting, vandalism, “acting against national security”, and conspiring against the ruling system.