Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School
It has been argued that the preparedness of the courts to declare governmental action unlawful is vital to the rule of law. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Yesterday’s High Court decision which annulled new police powers to control protests shows that there might be two sides to this, especially when you find yourself on the school run behind a deliberately
James Cleverly won’t be able to move the Julian Assange file out of his inbox quite yet after all. The High Court has allowed Assange to appeal once more against extradition to the US on the basis that no sufficient assurances have been received over his ability to rely on the First Amendment if tried
Except for households blessed with rather generous incomes, most mothers these days have to work to keep a family decently fed and housed. Some kind of subsidised childcare is therefore an unfortunate necessity. The government recognises this, and has just introduced a new scheme. When fully up and running, it will give parents working full-time
Last week in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, nearly 50 prominent Sikhs gathered to mark the formation of the world’s first specifically Sikh court. When the body opens for business on 1 June, its members will be available essentially to do two things. They can provide what the lawyers call Alternative Dispute Resolution, helping to settle family and community
Before 7 October last year, observers had long suspected an uncomfortable symbiosis between UNRWA, the UN organisation tasked with organising aid to the unfortunate Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, and the autocratic Hamas government in control in Gaza city. The attack on Israel on that day certainly didn’t dispel these suspicions, and in January this
The movement to radicalise the art and museum world was always going to come back and bite its own children. It has happened more quickly than we thought, as demonstrated by the seriously red faces at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) last week. Among the paintings on display at the NPG was one by French
It was always a racing certainty that this week’s ‘Swiss grannies’ climate change judgment in Strasbourg would spawn a new wave of environmental lawfare and give new life to that already in progress. A taste of the brave new future duly came from the High Court in London yesterday. Section 58 of the Climate Change Act requires
The media and the middle class may love net zero. Unfortunately, it is increasingly clear that voters are less keen. Predictably then, activists have been trying to take as much power as possible away from elected representatives, transferring it instead to international courts and judges. This morning, this programme of lawfare scored a major success in the
Britain in the nineteenth century pioneered the idea of the professional, impartial civil service independent of politics. In the twenty-first, that same civil service is unfortunately pioneering the notion of a body increasingly independent of the state that employs it, and apt at times to follow its own remarkably political agenda without much control from
The Garrick Club affair has taken a new and slightly worrying twist, this time courtesy of – of all bodies – the Bar Council. Hot on the heels of calls for judges to resign en masse from the club because it remains single-sex, the Council now apparently wants to go even further. It is hinting that
The fall-out from Covid continues. Its latest manifestations on the international stage are a draft pandemic preparedness treaty, soon to be formally published and opened for signature by the WHO, and an upcoming vote on proposals to amend the organisation’s International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR). The latter is a set of internationally binding rules for
Ukraine’s bravery and daring in the face of Russian aggression marks a stark contrast with European – or at least EU – lethargy and disinclination to take sides. A recent spat over, of all things, European trade mark law is a case in point. In early 2022, a soldier on the desolate Snake Island in
We have suspected for some time that UK universities were supping with the devil when they relied on legions of foreign, especially Chinese, students to balance the books. Last week the mask slipped spectacularly at University College London. Some months ago a Chinese student complained of ‘horrible provocation’ when Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor dealing with human
Judge Tanweer Ikram is not your usual judge. Ikram, who has a CBE to his name for services to diversity, has tirelessly insisted that minorities need to see people looking like them in senior positions (he has Pakistani Muslim heritage). Whether you see him as an innovative radical or a dreary progressive, Ikram is now
Churches are emptier than ever since Covid. Fewer clergy have more and more parishes to look after; the buildings themselves are falling down, with little money available to repair them. In the face of these existential problems, what high-profile subject was discussed over the weekend by the General Synod of the Church of England? Encouraging more worshippers,
The largest mass trespass in a generation will take place in Devon today. Hundreds of protesters belonging to the pressure-group Right to Roam will descend on Vixen Tor, a slightly sinister-looking granite outcrop on Dartmoor a few miles from Tavistock. Since 2003, access has been banned. But given that much of Dartmoor is already open
‘UK’s Rwanda Bill incompatible with human rights obligations… damning report by MPs warns.’ So ran the headline yesterday morning, referring to the report released by the joint human rights select committee on the Safety of Rwanda Bill. As often happens, however, immediate appearances can deceive. Constitutionally, the UK is administered by a ministry with the confidence of the House
To misquote von Clausewitz, the European Union sees lawfare as the continuation of politics by other means. Brussels’s latest sally against the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, which it viscerally detests (and which seriously rattled Eurocrats last week with its calculated brinkmanship over the Ukrainian aid programme) is a nice example. The new casus belli is a piece
All eyes were on Hungary’s Viktor Orbán at yesterday’s EU summit in Brussels. The issue at stake was simple but vital. The EU wanted to provide €50 billion (£43 billion) in aid to Ukraine over four years, but this use of the bloc’s funds required unanimity from all member states. Orbán remained unconvinced. But would
Last week the shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook tabled an opportunistic amendment to the government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. This would require the government to closely regulate all estate agents selling leasehold properties or properties carrying management or service charges (in essence flats, or houses on managed estates). There is a lot that is
