All articles by Joshua Rozenberg – Page 17
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Media reaction to the Purdy aftermath highlights a wider ignorance
Has Keir Starmer QC really made it possible for relatives to help loved ones to die without fear of prosecution, as the Times reported? Did the director of public prosecutions issue ‘tick-box guidelines’, as the Telegraph believed?
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Whitehall needs to re-examine how best to use intercept evidence
Three young British Muslim would-be suicide bombers were sentenced to life imprisonment this week for plotting to blow up seven airliners over the Atlantic. Directing that they serve minimum terms of up to 40 years, Mr Justice Henriques called the plot the most ‘grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within ...
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Separated from parliament, will the Supreme Court become too powerful?
Creating the Supreme Court ‘as a result of what appears to have been a last-minute decision over a glass of whisky’ seems to verge on the frivolous, Lord Neuberger tells me. ‘You muck around with a constitution like the British Constitution at your peril, because ...
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Law lords sit for the last time before moving to the Supreme Court
So farewell, then, law lords. The appellate committee of the House of Lords is sitting today for the last time in 133 years, hearing a short immigration appeal and then delivering seven judgments. On 1 October, the law lords will be transformed into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
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Challenging debates remain on Islam and English law
The Temple Church is to be commended for its efforts to improve interfaith relations over the past 18 months, even though some of the public meetings it held on Islam in English law did not turn out quite as intended. Since Muslims were well represented among ...
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A tribute: Lord Bingham’s passion for justice and history
For me, last Thursday was Bingham day. I spent the morning interviewing the former senior law lord about a centre for the study of the rule of law to be established in his name. In the afternoon I dipped into a book of essays written in his honour by more ...
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Meinl affair casts shadow over common law jurisdictions
How safe is it for British businesses to invest in Austria? A flying visit this week suggests its response to allegations of white-collar crime leaves a lot to be desired. Despite reforms last year, the relationship between Austrian prosecutors, pre-trial judges and criminal defence lawyers still seems far too cosy.
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Adherence to the rule of law is vital to the 'survival of the world'
With four months to go before he becomes president of the new UK Supreme Court, Lord Phillips is managing to dispel the impression that he is merely a pale imitation of the man who would have headed the court if it had been completed in time, the much-admired Lord Bingham. ...
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ICC's credibility hangs on Palestinian statehood decision
President Obama’s meeting this week with the Israeli prime minister has focused attention on the universal goal of a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside its Jewish neighbour. But there is increasing concern in legal circles that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court risks making the ...
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Old World countries must try harder on human rights
Britain should take steps to ban complicity in torture, the most senior elected official at Europe’s largest representative body said in London this week. I don’t suppose the government was too worried. It would be cruel to say that Terry Davis is not a household ...
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How Pinochet tainted Hoffmann's brilliant career
So, farewell then Lord Hoffmann. The much misspelled judge retired as a law lord this week to earn some real money as an international arbitrator and mediator. He will practise from Brick Court Chambers – whose joint head, Jonathan Hirst QC, proclaimed that Hoffmann’s ‘reputation as one of the leading ...
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Should the AG have power of veto over arrests for war crimes?
After spending nearly 35 years as a public prosecutor, it can’t be very easy to switch from advising on what the law is to thinking about what it ought to be.
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Whitehall's concessions over secret inquests are a mixed bag
Can a secret inquest ever be justified after a person has died at the hands of the state? Or does the government deserve some credit for limiting the likelihood that future inquests will be held behind closed doors? That was a key issue that divided MPs as they spent two ...
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Britain’s electoral registration system faces overhaul
Great Britain is to become a democracy – but not quite yet. That’s the message that emerged from a ‘historic’ but little-reported late-night announcement by the justice minister last week.
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The ECHR’s ‘realistic’ ruling on unlawful detention
Judgments involving Abu Qatada are a bit like buses: you wait ages for one to turn up and then two come along together. Last Wednesday, the home secretary won her appeal to the House of Lords against a ruling that the radical Muslim cleric could not ...
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Lord Bingham monitors the Binyam Mohamed controversy
David Miliband won something of a hollow victory over the media last week. The foreign secretary persuaded two judges not to publish ‘seven very short paragraphs’ they had withheld from a judgment last August. These 25 lines summarised reports to British security and intelligence officials by ...
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Britain’s military prosecutor will never ‘go native’
News that President Obama had decided to end military trials at Guantanamo Bay broke just as I was on my way to see Britain’s new military prosecutor, providing me with a perfect starting point for my interview. But it is very difficult to imagine Bruce Houlder ...
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Solicitors and judicial appointments
Solicitors will have to try a little harder if they want to become High Court judges, the Lord Chief Justice suggested last week. ‘I doubt whether it is fully understood that any solicitors intending to seek a full-time judicial appointment should gain part-time sitting experience,’ Lord Judge said, ‘and that ...
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Dame Hazel Genn warns of 'downgrading' of civil justice
Mediation ‘is not about just settlement’, said Professor Dame Hazel Genn earlier this month. ‘It is just about settlement.’ This pithy attack on received wisdom aptly summed up three excoriating Hamlyn lectures in which the professor of socio-legal studies at University College London stripped away some ...
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Unresolved issues relating to the role of the Supreme Court
Despite the refreshing openness of last week’s judicial seminar on the Supreme Court, some of the most difficult questions remain unanswered. We learned, for example, that more than 30 applications have been received for the three judicial posts that will have become vacant by next October ...