Law

Last week, Nick Cohen suggested that Lady Butler-Sloss was not the correct person to lead the child abuse enquiry. She has now resigned from her role.  The Guardian says today that Lady Butler-Sloss cannot be the right person to lead the inquiry into alleged child abuse. ‘Not only was her brother, Lord Havers, attorney general – and briefly lord chancellor – at the time of some of the allegations of cover-up. She is also of the same generation as those around whom rumours swirl. If she were still sitting as a judge, she would never contemplate being involved in a case that might touch, however remotely, on family or friends.’ Unfortunately, this isn’t true.

There is, I realise, no perfect, neutral way of describing ‘assisted dying’, the substance of Lord Falconer’s bill which comes up for its second reading on 18th July. ‘Right to die’ is a bit tricky; dying is one of those rights that are thrust upon us without our even asking. It’s part of the human condition; just wait long enough, and it’s yours. And as Jenny McCartney eloquently makes clear in her piece on the subject, it’s actually assisted suicide — the assistance being provided by a doctor – or if you prefer, killing by request.

I have just decided that my work is of equal value to that of the feminist supermodel Cameron Russell. Neither of us, admittedly, is quite as useful as a plumber, and I can’t claim to be of much use promoting swimwear. But otherwise I reckon we are a pretty close match. We both tart ourselves around and while my work doesn’t involve a lot of physical input, I would like to think that it requires a slightly higher contribution from the brain department. There then arises the question: should I not be paid as much as she is? Ludicrous? Perhaps, but no more so, I think, than what is going on in Birmingham, where council taxpayers are facing a £1 billion bill for a mass equal pay claim on the part of 11,000 female staff.

I like Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake of the Sunday Times. I will not pretend they are anything like close friends or family. I doubt if I see them more than once a year. But before you read any further you should know about our acquaintance. It is important for journalists to declare their interests. Readers must be free to make up their own minds, even if I believe – especially if I believe – that a friendship or family bond could never influence my writing. In a few days, the Sunday Times will apply for the right to appeal against a decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat from July last year. Peter Cruddas, a former co-treasurer of the Conservative Party had sued the Sunday Times after it sent undercover reporters – Calvert and Blake – to interview him.

A friend of mine, quite a distinguished lawyer, takes the view that marriage ceased to make sense after no-fault divorces came in. What, he says sternly, is the point of a contract when there’s no sanction if you break it? Well, quite. But if no-fault divorce pretty well invalidates marriage after the event, prenups do quite a good job of undermining it beforehand. The point of marriage is that it’s meant to be a lifetime affair – the hint being in the ‘til death do us part’ bit – and the point of prenups is that they make provision for the thing ending before it even gets underway.

Litigants in person – individuals representing themselves, rather than relying on a lawyer – have always been a feature in courts, and are the source of the aphorism ‘a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client’. While the profusion of courts means there are no easily available statistics as to their numbers, as late as 2011, about one fifth of cases featured litigants in person. Since the government slashed legal aid in April of last year, the number of them has exploded. While the funding for these cases has vanished, the right to go to court has not. The most recent set of figures is for autumn 2013 - before many cases under the new regime were launched.

Way back in the late 1990s, I spent a lot of time in court. What happened, see, was that in the wee small hours of a drunken Edinburgh morning, my friend Jonny and I took a shortcut home through the disused railway tunnel that runs under Holyrood Park. I’d been through it many times, being enraptured with the magic of abandoned urban spaces and, perhaps more to the point, stupid, but never before had it contained a gang of pissed-up youths on a rampage. This time it did, and they put us in hospital. Various arrests followed pretty swiftly.

It’s a real pleasure looking through the first few editions of the Spectator from 1828, where the police reports and brief news items conjure up the England of Dickens and Trollope. There’s a man who comes before the court for throwing his wooden leg at people and is reprimanded by the judge. In a riotous atmosphere in court, the pauper explains that he can’t very well work with a leg that’s a foot and a half too short. Eventually, the Lord Mayor intercedes: ‘Defendant, I have prevailed upon the parish to put you once more upon your legs properly; and let me entreat you never to throw away an old leg until you get a new one."— (Loud laughing.

Farewell then Sunny Hundal. The libellous blogger and tweeter has announced that he is no longer going to keep up his self-published website ‘Liberal Conspiracy’. One reason – far beyond satire – is that he is going to go to the University of Kingston to lecture on journalism. Sunny is perhaps not best placed to inform them on basic journalistic standards. As I have written here before, some years ago Sunny had to pay out and publish a wholesale apology to me after libelling me on his website. On that occasion he published outright falsehoods, though his more typical style has been to settle for selective quotation, misquotation and misrepresentation.

Sir Brian Leveson, who has ascended from his inquiry podium to President of the Queen’s Bench Division and Chairman of the Sentencing Council, seems to be getting a taste for public appearances. Last week he frustratingly stonewalled two parliamentary committees who had the temerity to ask for some post-publication thoughts on his report into the press, saying 'I am a serving judge. It would be absolutely inappropriate for me to come back into the question of my report or regulation of the Press.' A parliamentarian, Philip Davies, called him a ‘berk’ in consequence. Mr S has heard a few of the good judge's learned friends express a similar view over the years.