Law

Friday

David Blackburn

The High Court’s decision on BA concerned law, not politics

The Guardian’s Seumas Milne condemns the BA strike judgement as ‘blatantly political’. He writes: ‘Mrs Justice Cox has made a transparently political decision to skew the balance of power still further in favour of BA’s recklessly incompetent management.’ That, as Mrs Thatcher would say, is poppycock. Mrs Justice Cox’s decision was informed by law, not ideology. Unite had balloted ineligible members, which is illegal. That the result of the ballot would not have changed is immaterial, Unite broke the law. In this instance, the legal decision will enable a sensible business plan time to develop. After years of procrastination and painting tail wings, the BA board is realistic about the

Sunday

David Blackburn

What should be in the British Bill of Rights?

The success or failure of Cameron’s EU policy rests in part on the promised British Bill of Rights. What is clear is that Tories are unclear what should be included in it. One question that is yet to be answered is whether aspects of the constitution should be entrenched? Writing on the Blue Blog today, Michael Howard writes: ‘Any decision about these rights requires a balancing of competing rights. The fundamental question is who should be responsible for striking that balance: elected MP’s or unelected judges? On terrorism, Parliament twice, after great debate, reached its view. Yet twice the judges have held that Parliament got it wrong. In doing so,

Friday

Alex Massie

Paul Clarke Update II

The national newspapers may not be terribly interested in the Paul Clarke case but, happily, legal blogger Jack of Kent is. He’s produced a detailed account of the case, and the law, that I highly recommend. Mr Clarke may not be the ideal poster boy for liberty but it’s equally clear that this is of little to no import. What we have here, as Jack of Kent makes clear, is a case that makes a nonsense of a) strict liability offences, b) manadatory minimums, c) the police and d) the CPS. It’s possible that e) the judiciary and f) the jury could also be added to this list. Mr Clarke

Thursday

Alex Massie

Trying KSM in NYC

On the whole I’m sympathetic to the Obama administration’s desire to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City. That is, dealing with this kind of terrorism is a matter of law-enforcement as well as, in other respects, a military matter. And yet, despite all the talk about how putting KSM on trial is an affirmation of superior, civilised values and all the rest of it, I’m not sure that the trial will be quite the propaganda victory some think it may be.  Ruth Marcus happily spares one the job of dealing with a typically atrocious Michael Gerson column which alleges, ludicrously, that the ACLU is

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Paul Clarke Update

Remember the outcry after the discovery that Paul Clarke could face five years in prison for the “crime” of finding a sawn-off shotgun in his garden and handing it in to his local police station? No, me neither. Well, blog-land has not been happy about this but, as a reader points out, our friends at newspapers and the BBC have completely ignored it: This story is getting zero coverage. I’ve seen more coverage from American websites than I have from UK sources. I’ve done a search at the Times, the Guardian and the BBC News website and – unless I’m doing something very wrong – none of them seem to

Saturday

Alex Massie

Is This the Most Enraging Story of the Year? Perhaps!

You might think that this story can’t be true or that’s been made-up to provoke everyone’s inner Littlejohn. But no, not so. It is true and, alas, an enraging, dispiriting business. A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”. Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

A chance for parliament to re-assert itself

This afternoon, I had the great privilege of hearing Geoffrey Robertson QC and Sir Ken MacDonald QC argue why English libel law must be reformed. Up to this point I had, along with most of the audience I suspect, assumed that reform would only benefit journalists. I suppose that illustrates just how narcissistic the profession is because now I see that libel reform is essential for the preservation free speech and the sanctity of English law. As Geoffrey Robertson put it, “We do not have free speech in this country, we have expensive speech.” English libel actions cost several million pounds to fight – 140 times more than the European

Monday

James Forsyth

A Grieve error

The Conservative leadership claims that a British Bill of Rights would serve to guide judges in interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights and so give Britain some discretion in how the rights which exist in the Charter — many of which are vague — are applied in this country. But in the new issue of Standpoint the eminent legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg reports that Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary and a firm supporter of the ECHR, thinks that a British Bill of Rights would only be introduced towards the end of a Cameron first term and might well not be on the statue book by the end of

Thursday

David Blackburn

The Equalities Commission plays straight into Griffin’s hands

The BBC reports that Nick Griffin is to put an amended constitution before his party that will abolish the ‘White only’ membership clause. This is the result of legal action brought by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who proved that the clause was at odds with equality law. John Wadham, of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the BBC: “We are pleased the party has conceded this case and agreed to all of the Commission requirements. Political parties, like any other organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people.” On the face of it, this should be welcome news, but the opposite is true.

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The right decision

There’s little more to add to Alex’s take on the news that Geert Wilders has won his appeal against the Home Office decision to bar him from the UK.  While there’s much about the Dutch MP which makes me feel uneasy, preventing him entry to this country always struck me as a needless and potentially inflammatory move.  Now, happily, that wrong has been righted, and there’s just one question left: will Jacqui issue yet another apology?* *Ahem, of course she won’t.  The Home Office is already saying that it may fight today’s ruling.

Friday

David Blackburn

The SFO can go hang, BAE should not be prosecuted for doing business

All eminent barristers have their specialism, Lord Goldsmith’s is changing his mind. Scholarly integrity is to blame – he likes to give both sides of the argument. His two thrillingly different Iraq war advices are, of course, his crowning achievement; but he’s playing devil’s advocate again today. He writes in the Guardian: ‘I applaud Richard Alderman, director of the Serious Fraud Office for his vigour in pursuing corruption cases in Africa and eastern Europe against BAE. Reports are that he had put an ultimatum to BAE to reach a plea agreement or suffer the full weight of prosecutions. He is right to do so.’ Now, the general sentiment expressed is somewhat

Wednesday

Andrew Caldecott

All the trimmings

The cover of this collection boasts a striking claim by P. D. James: ‘Rumpole, like Jeeves and Sherlock Holmes, is immortal.’ But will Rumpole’s world endure with Baker Street and Totleigh Towers? The cover of this collection boasts a striking claim by P. D. James: ‘Rumpole, like Jeeves and Sherlock Holmes, is immortal.’ But will Rumpole’s world endure with Baker Street and Totleigh Towers? The case in favour rests partly on the similarities. All three are first-person, multi-story narratives. In each, the forces of darkness are painted with gothic panache — Moriarty, Sir Watkyn Bassett and, in Rumpole’s case, most of Her Majesty’s judiciary, including, in the two best stories

Wednesday

Michael Beloff

One to admire

The English Bar is no longer immune to the celebrity culture. There are lawyers’ equivalents to Hello! magazine and the Oscars ceremony; lists of the 100 most, top ten, five to follow, proliferate. But peer and public recognition do not always coincide. To that rule Michael (or more usually Mike) Mansfield is a notable exception. He is indisputably the most high- profile barrister of his generation, both within and beyond the profession, and for that reason alone his memoirs, published to celebrate what he claims to be his retirement from practice, were always likely to be of interest. Expectations are amply fulfilled. This is essentially a fascinating and passionate record

Sunday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie-for-Oil?

Pete suggests there’s little more to say about the Sunday Times story on the UK government’s attitude towards the release of the Abdelbaset ali al-Megrahi. The suggestion given by the paper – and increasingly assumed to be true by everyone else – is that Megrahi was freed for fear that keeping him in prison in Scotland would jeopardise potentially £15bn worth of business for BP in Libya. The implication is that, like the war in Iraq, it’s all about the oil. Well, we had to reach this point eventually, I guess. Nonetheless, though it’s written by my old friend Jason Allardyce, there’s a little less to the Sunday Times’s story

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Suicide is Painless, It Brings on Many Changes...

No-one could mistake back-bench Conservative MPs for advocates for limited government. So it’s scarcely surprising that Nadine Dorries and Edward Leigh are up in arms over proposals to “clarify” the law (in England and Wales) on assisted suicide. You might think it’s your body and your life but that doesn’t mean you have the right to decide your own fate. No way. Not if these energetic busybodies have anything to do with it. On her blog, Dorries raises the preposterous prospect of state-sponsored death squads marauding through Britain’s nursing homes and hospitals, pulling out plugs and smothering pensioners with their pillows. She doesn’t put it quite as colourfully as that,

Saturday

Michael Beloff

Wit and wisdom | 14 March 2009

Judicial biography is out of fashion: Lord Chancellors apart, the lives of the bewigged great and good are confined within the narrow boundaries of the Dictionary of National Biography. Judicial autobiography is too often driven more by the self-esteem of the authors than the intrinsic interest of the subject. Anthony Lentin convincingly establishes his subject’s claim to resurrection. Born John Andrew Hamilton and of Mancunian middle-class origins, the future Viscount profited from an education at two great forcing houses of talent, Manchester Grammar School and Balliol. Called to the Bar by the Inner Temple, he was no instant success either in London or on the Northern Circuit. For many years