All articles by Joshua Rozenberg – Page 13

  • News

    EU accession to the ECHR will change Euro legal framework

    15 April 2013

    For as long as I have been a legal journalist, I have tried to explain to people that there are two separate European courts run by two unrelated European bodies. The 47-member Council of Europe administers the European Convention on Human Rights and supports a court in Strasbourg that decides ...

  • News

    Maintaining public confidence is tough for the judiciary

    18 March 2013

    Having good judgement is one thing that the judiciary should be good at. But deciding cases is not nearly as difficult for judges as maintaining public confidence in the judiciary. And that requires considerable sensitivity to the public mood.

  • News

    Positive discrimination in judiciary faces struggles

    04 March 2013

    The appointment of three ‘top judges’ attracted predictably little press attention last week, even though Lord Justice Hughes, Lord Justice Toulson and Lord Hodge will make up a quarter of the Supreme Court. Perhaps that is a good sign; it suggests the public has no reason to doubt that the ...

  • News

    ‘Press LSB’ without MPs’ approval is unattractive

    18 February 2013

    The government’s attempts to reform press regulation have something of the surreal about them. A draft royal charter, full of suitably medieval language, was published by the Conservatives last week - apparently, because they did not want to put a bill before parliament. But, despite that, they published draft legislation ...

  • News

    Drone dialogue

    04 February 2013

    When can states use lethal drone strikes on terrorists operating abroad? There is little consensus between government lawyers and academics on when international law will permit unmanned aerial vehicles to target individuals. And the need for a common position was given added impetus late last month when a QC announced ...

  • News

    Crown succession approach out of kilter

    14 January 2013

    Governments are often accused of legislating in haste and repenting at leisure. One such example is the Succession to the Crown Bill, backed by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and to be debated in the Commons next week.

  • News

    Seat at international table at risk over human rights

    Archive

    It seems a long time since human rights were regarded as a noble aspiration. Since then, they have become something of a political football. Where will it be kicked next? On prisoners’ votes, the government’s goal is clearly the long grass. Remember David Cameron promising that ‘prisoners are not getting ...

  • News

    Fears LETR may lead to ‘misguided reform’

    Archive

    A forthcoming report on the case for reforming legal education and training may be ‘unbalanced or worse’, the UK’s senior judge said in a lecture last week. According to Lord Neuberger, ‘misguided reform’ initiated by the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) may ‘undermine the rule of law and our ...

  • News

    Blazing a trail: women and the judiciary

    2012-11-08T00:00:00Z

    Who was the first woman judge in England and Wales? If you replied ‘Elizabeth Lane’, award yourself an A grade: Lane (1905-1998) became the first female county court judge in 1962, moving to the High Court three years later.

  • News

    Ignoring PACE was not ‘brave’

    2012-10-25T00:00:00Z

    Is Christopher Halliwell, 48, really likely to ‘walk free’ when he has served the 25-year minimum term he was given for murdering 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, as one newspaper reported on Saturday? Sentencing him to life imprisonment a day earlier, Mrs Justice Cox told him: ‘If you are eventually released on ...

  • News

    No case to answer? Private prosecutions and prospects of conviction

    2012-10-11T00:00:00Z

    When should you be allowed to bring a private prosecution? The very idea that a private individual may be able to initiate the state’s powers to prosecute and punish offenders may strike some people as strange. Isn’t that the job of public prosecutors, such as the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)?

  • News

    Defining the coroner’s role has been the work of centuries

    2012-09-27T00:00:00Z

    In the world of sudden deaths, the law tends to move slowly. Parliament first passed legislation setting out the duties of coroners well over 700 years ago, in 1275. But the Statute of Westminster can also be seen as the last act of parliament to define the coroner’s role, in ...

  • News

    Does new justice secretary’s lack of legal experience matter?

    2012-09-13T00:00:00Z

    Judging by the look of its website on Tuesday morning, the Ministry of Justice still seems to be reeling a week after the replacement of almost all its ministers. There was little more on its main news page than a staged photograph of Chris Grayling, the new justice secretary and ...

  • News

    Religious beliefs should be respected - when rights are not impeded

    2012-08-30T00:00:00Z

    Next week, the European Court of Human Rights will hear four claims against the UK that raise perhaps the most sensitive rights of all: the freedom of thought, conscience and religion guaranteed by article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Although the freedom to hold religious views is ...

  • News

    New draft code does not go far enough

    2012-07-26T00:00:00Z

    Can we afford to prosecute people any more? We have already seen the government’s proposals to introduce what it calls ‘deferred’ prosecution agreements, under which companies that commit economic crimes will be able to escape criminal charges, indefinitely, if they agree to pay penalties and comply with other conditions. Last ...

  • News

    Asking the right questions

    2012-07-12T00:00:00Z

    It is the sort of thing that gives lawyers a good name. MPs spent three hours last week debating Labour’s call for an ‘independent, forensic, judge-led public inquiry’ into the culture and professional standards of the banking industry.

  • News

    The National Archives is recruiting volunteers to update the statute book

    2012-06-28T00:00:00Z

    Ignorance of the law is, notoriously, no excuse. But the individual citizen has never had access to a free, up-to-date account of what the law is on any particular topic. Acts of parliament can be consulted in public libraries (if there are any left) but a printed copy is only ...

  • News

    Two High Court cases focus on the legality of assisted dying

    2012-06-14T00:00:00Z

    Next week the High Court will begin hearing two cases that raise profound ethical issues. The question in each case is whether it can ever be lawful to help another person take their own life. This is a subject on which we might reasonably have expected ...

  • News

    Government must not ignore Strasbourg’s overtures on prisoner voting

    2012-05-31T00:00:00Z

    How did the government get itself into such a mess over prisoners voting? After human rights judges stretched out the hand of friendship to the UK last week, David Cameron promptly bit it off, willingly giving parliament an undertaking that he would not succumb to what one MP had described ...

  • News

    Has attack warning come too late?

    2012-05-17T00:00:00Z

    Professionalism is under threat. So said Lady Justice Hallett in a little-noticed speech at the end of March to the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates (SAHCA). Dame Heather Hallett’s concerns were echoed by Baroness Deech, chair of the Bar Standards Board, in a lecture she gave at Gresham College ...