Law

Tuesday

David Blackburn

The "bedroom tax" judgment has implications far beyond bedrooms

The High Court has rejected the “bedroom tax” claimants’ case. In a ruling issued earlier this morning, Lord Justice Laws said that ‘the PSED [Public Sector Equality Duty on the benefit reforms] was fulfilled; and the effects of the HB [Housing Benefit] cap were properly considered in terms of the discipline imposed by the requirement of proportionality.’ On the point of the government providing additional help for disabled people affected by the cap, the judge wrote: ‘provision of extra funding for DHPs [‘discretionary housing payments’] and advice and guidance on its use cannot be said to be a disproportionate approach to the difficulties which those persons faced.’ Laws added that certain arguments of the claimants

Monday

David Blackburn

The judicial review row should not be about lawyers – it is about democracy

The stooshie over judicial review is not about lawyers, although one should be forgiven for thinking otherwise given much of today’s coverage and reaction. Really, it is about the rule of law and representative democracy. So much of the debate around legal reform (not just judicial review) has been skewed by familiar obsessions with ‘human rights’, ‘lefty lawyers’ and ‘right-wing bastards’. Such media tropes are not created ex nihilo. Public administration has become highly politicised, and all sides play the game. I’ve heard government-types talk about the need to break ‘lefty lawyers’’ perceived monopoly over legal aid and some corners of the judiciary. And I’ve heard said ‘lefty lawyers’ talk in

David Blackburn

Boris the ironist treads a careful path through immigration row

Boris Johnson’s Telegraph columns are often works of mischief, but today’s is a carefully constructed piece of politics. His subject is immigration – about which the political nation has been warring over the weekend. Boris is, famously, pro-immigration – as one would have to be to win elections in London, irrespective of whether one was a Conservative. And his attitude to illegal immigration is pragmatic: illegals need to be brought into the fold or deported. Boris treads this line again today. First, he writes a paean to the runner Mo Farah – who personifies a ‘sermon as to what immigrants can achieve if they work hard’. Then he says that illegal immigrants

David Blackburn

Employment tribunal changes a prelude of what’s to come over legal aid

Changes to the legal system come into force today, with workers being charged for bringing cases against their bosses to employment tribunals. Employees will pay £150-£260 initially, and then there will be a further charge of between £230 and £950 for the hearing. You can read all of the guidance here. The politics of this are relatively clear: business groups, especially those representing small businesses, welcome the effort to tackle ‘vexatious claims’, which impede their operation and confidence. Trade unions say that there are no reliable figures on the number of vexatious claims; and they point out that the number of cases being brought is declining. The government talks of

Friday

Philippa Tuckman

Soldiers’ right to protection remains, and so it should

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling in the Snatch Land Rover / Challenger II cases, which allowed the families of four soldiers who lost their lives while serving in Iraq to sue for damages, has provoked some strong opinions. Some say that the MoD is in all ways different from other employers and that it should not therefore be held accountable in the courts. Of course soldiering is not ‘just another job’, but surely it does not follow that we should tolerate the deaths of young British citizens if those deaths are caused by the Government’s failure to provide adequate training or equipment. Soldiers should be no less entitled than the

Thursday

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Cicero on tax havens

David Cameron wants the international community to do something about big business avoiding paying tax. If only it were as simple as that. Ancient philosophers, beginning with Aristotle (4th C BC), made a distinction between man-made law, which was peculiar to a state that made it and derived its validity simply from its adoption by that state, and natural law, which was universally valid. One could say that the former was right because it was law, the latter was law because it was right. Cicero (1st C BC) called this universal ‘world’ law ius naturale, identified it with divine reason and associated it with another concept, that of the ‘law of nations’, ius

Thursday

Alex Massie

Hail Caledonia: Fantasy Justice and Offensive Behaviour at Football. The Horror Continues.

Two years have passed since the SNP won its landslide election victory, leaving Alex Salmond master of all devolved territories. Two years notable for the absence of significant legislative achievement. Given the consequences of government legislation this is not necessarily something to be regretted. Nevertheless, Mr Salmond is no FDR or LBJ (again, a good thing too you may say). The exception to this record of legislative lethargy is, of course, our old friend the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act. Readers may recall that I am no fan of this illiberal, pernicious, dismal piece of legislation (my most recent post on it is here). Nothing that has

David Blackburn

Bring on the drones – the Supreme Court has changed the way we fight wars

On the face of it, the Supreme Court’s decision to allow three suits to be brought against the Ministry of Defence is surprising, almost shocking. My colleague Alex Massie has castigated the judgment; but, while I don’t necessarily disagree with Alex’s sentiments, the judgment merits very close attention. It is a politically far-reaching decision. The Court was asked to consider whether British military personnel on active duty overseas are under the jurisdiction of the European Convention of Human Rights. If they are, then the British state has a duty to secure the human rights of its overseas personnel (specifically their right to life under article 2 of the Convention) as

Thursday

Harry Mount

Take it from a former barrister: Chris Grayling is right to reform legal aid

Shakespeare took it a little far in Henry IV, Part II, when Dick the Butcher said, ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’ Chris Grayling hasn’t made the same proposal but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, listening to the howls of anguish and indignation coming from the Inns of Court. Grayling, the first non-lawyer to be made Lord Chancellor since the 17th century, has simply said he wants to make some savings in the legal aid bill. To the lawyers, unaccustomed to having their privileges and subsidies challenged by anyone, this means war. Already, 90 millionaire QCs — poor, impoverished Cherie Blair among them — have written a letter to

Johan Norberg

Why Sweden has riots

  Stockholm  ‘All of them should have been very happy,’ Robert A. Heinlein begins his 1942 novel Beyond This Horizon. The material problem has been solved on this future earth, poverty and disease have been eradicated, work is optional. And yet parts of the citizenry are not enthusiastic. Some are bored, others are preparing a revolt. Why should that be, in such a utopian world? A similar puzzlement has been the dominant reaction from commentators after riots broke out and cars and buildings were burned in heavily immigrant-populated suburbs of Stockholm in late May. Sweden? Since the standard interpretation is that violence is the only weapon the marginalised have against

Nick Cohen

How social media helps authoritarians

Have you heard? Do you know? Are you, as they say, ‘in the loop’? When the Mail on Sunday said a ‘sensational affair’ between ‘high profile figures’ close to Cameron had ‘rocked’ No. 10, did you have the faintest idea what it was talking about? I did, but then I’m a journalist. Friends in the lobby filled me in on a story which had been doing the rounds for months. I even know which law stopped the Mail on Sunday  following the basics of journalism and giving its readers the ‘whos’, ‘whats’, ‘whens’, ‘whys’ and ‘hows’. (Although with most affairs the ‘whys’ are self-evident. It is the ‘whos’ and, for

Lloyd Evans

Theatre review: Below par Mamet is still more fun than a personal-best performance from a second-rater

Mamet is back. His 2009 play Race is an offbeat courtroom drama set entirely in a lawyers’ office before the trial begins. Jack and Henry are two hotshot attorneys, one white, one black, who must decide whether to accept the case of a prosperous banker, Charles, accused of raping a black woman in a hotel. Jack and Henry have a young black trainee, Susan, whose ethnicity and gender may help them sway the jury. The case against Charles turns on sequins. The victim swears that her dress was torn off during the attack but a hotel cleaner found no sequins on the floor. Sequinned attire is naturally deciduous, or, as

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

What can society learn from the 'grooming' scandals?

The verdicts have been delivered in the Operation Bullfinch trial. Seven of the nine men have been found ‘guilty’. The case involved the highly organised sexual and physical abuse of underage girls in the ‘care’ system. This was carried out by a gang of men in Oxfordshire over the course of nearly a decade. As I wrote of one of the most shocking aspects of the case: ‘One of the victims sold into slavery was a girl of 11. She was branded with the initial of her “owner” abuser: “M” for Mohammed. The court heard that Mohammed “branded her to make her his property and to ensure others knew about

Thursday

Stephen Pollard

The Queen’s speech can’t repeal the Law of Unintended Consequences

Last week, the European Commission voted to ban three pesticides which are said to harm bees. Everyone loves bees, so perhaps we should all be rejoicing? Well, I’m afraid my reaction was not joy, but to think: here we go again, this is bound to mean more dead bees. It’s inevitable: whether it’s a ban, an order or a reform, it doesn’t matter. When governments act they almost always forget the golden rule of public policy: the Law of Unintended -Consequences. And guess what? Just a few days after the vote, scientists are pointing out that the ban will mean farmers using older chemicals that are even more harmful to

Wednesday

Elliot Gold

Reform human rights to save human rights

The European Convention of Human Rights is developed and interpreted as times change; but is there a democratic imbalance when only lawyers and judges can do this? Particularly where the rights being litigated are not just matters of strict law but properly political issues. It is a valid democratic concern that the Human Rights Act, which brought the European Convention into our own law, may encourage political questions to be converted into legal questions, taken to an unelected judge rather than to Parliament. Such wider political questions affect not just the rights of the individual but of society at large – and many consider that their voices on such matters

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Another weird sacking

Another teacher has been sacked for what looks like a wholly fatuous and unjust reason; these stories come in at the rate of about two a week. Christopher Hammond, head of German at a private girls’ school in Reading, was booted out for having taken photographs of his pupils on a school trip. Or, at least, on the technicality of taking them on his own camera rather than using a ‘memory card or school-owned device’. None of the photos were remotely indecent, nor was there any suggestion he might be a bit of a wrong ‘un on the quiet. Leaving Mr Hammond’s case aside, I wonder if these weird sackings

Friday

Alex Massie

Vicky Pryce and the Usefulness of the Not Proven Verdict

Like John Rentoul, I think much of the scoffing and chortling at the expense of the poor jury asked to consider Vicky Pryce’s guilt (or innocence!) is misplaced. This was an unusual case. The questions* they asked – which have been much mocked – seem entirely reasonable to me. More than that, they’re quite intelligent. “Reasonable doubt” for instance is not necessarily an obvious thing to measure or define. As for their conduct demonstrating that the Great British public is incapable of jury service, well, phooey to that. In any case, in both the legal systems that apply on these islands, the vast majority of trials do not involve juries

Tuesday

Nick Cohen

Arraigning a corpse

Part 1 “Russian Justice” A judge at Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court stopped the trial of Sergei Magnitsky (above) yesterday – but not because the defendant was dead. Magnitsky’s demise was of no concern to the judge. It did not bother him in the slightest. The court merely postponed proceedings until 4 March when the world will see something rarely seen since the Middle Ages: a prosecutor arraigning a corpse. The Putin regime – that mixture of autocracy and gangsterism – is desperate to discredit the late Mr Magnitsky and his employer, Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital. If you don’t know the story, I’ll explain why. Browder exposed corruption in Russian

Monday

David Blackburn

Government will appeal controversial immigration decision

Further to the row that has erupted between Theresa May and some judges over the deportation of foreign criminals, the government is understood to be applying to appeal the case of MF. The Home Secretary is plainly confident that her arguments will be well received in the Court of Appeal, having been found wanting in the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). The issue of deporting foreign criminals has been cast by some as a disagreement between senior judges and their more activist juniors, and not merely a clash between different arms of government. Theresa May’s team have been at pains to point out that the majority of senior judges support her case. Indeed, May

Wednesday

Thomas Duggins

Adultery and the same-sex marriage bill

Nadine Dorries said during the debate on same sex marriage last week that ‘This bill in no way makes a requirement of faithfulness from same-sex couples. In fact, it does the opposite’. Her rather surprising claim stems from the government’s plans to maintain the current definition of adultery in the equal marriage bill. Although not defined in statute, case law defines adultery as sexual intercourse between persons of the opposite sex. So while a heterosexual man can be divorced on the basis of unfaithfulness with another woman, a homosexual man could not on the basis of unfaithfulness with another man. The definition of adultery has caused legislators a collective headache