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All articles by Roger Smith – Page 5
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News
Legal aid is under threat across Europe and it is time to fight to save it
Let’s be honest. You are not going to plough your way through the 657 pages of the newly published Effective Criminal Defence in Europe, nor even the more accessible 30-page summary. However, you should know what you have missed. These reports have important lessons relevant to the upcoming battle for ...
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Baha Mousa inquiry raises important human rights concerns
You can see why Sir Mike Jackson was Tony Blair’s favourite soldier. He looks – even with his manicured eye bags – like a general and he talks like a general. He is politically shrewd; he demanded the opinion on the legality of the Iraq war that has subsequently dogged ...
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Will the new government and Clarke uphold promises on legal issues?
Sometimes you can’t do better than Bruce Springsteen: ‘Down here it’s just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.’ Jack Straw will appreciate the full force of the Boss’s observations. But there were also winners and losers among the Conservatives. And, beyond the ...
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Why third-party interventions in the judicial process benefit democracy
by Roger Smithis director of law reform and human rights organisation JusticeAmnesty International did it in the Pinochet cases – with a somewhat unexpected result. The United Synagogue did it in the Jewish Free School case. Secretaries of state do it regularly; the attorney general occasionally. Justice does it about ...
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Two landmark reports demonstrate the complexity of human rights
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has just published the 200-page report of its Human Rights Inquiry. Meanwhile, rather more economically, Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) has put out its study – British forces in Iraq: the emerging picture of human rights violations and the role of the judicial review. ...
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New anti-terrorism legislation is ill-considered and unnecessary
Nine-nil. The House of Lords does not get more decisive than that: control orders are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Alan Johnson, the new boy at the Home Office, duly declared their Lordships’ judgment ‘disappointing’. But it is more the government that merits disappointment than the judges. ...
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Battle for legal aid's future is not about the profession
Last month, Law Society president Paul Marsh opened a debate entitled ‘Legal aid: a vision for the next 60 years’. The panel included the legal aid minister, Lord Bach. There was plenty of talk about the parlous state of legal aid. Vision, however, was in short supply.
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Why effective representation in police stations is vital
Ed Cape is a solicitor. If you are a criminal practitioner you will know his name – he is an expert on the role of police station duty solicitors. For many years he practised in the Bristol St Paul’s area.
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The ‘rules of the game’ on terror have not changed
The International Commission of Jurists was lucky in the timing of its report on counter-terrorism and human rights: Assessing Damage, Urging Action. In the US, the new administration of President Obama was but a month old, promising a review of his predecessor’s ‘war on terror’. ...
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Human rights are too important to be left to party politics
Dominic Raab is a Tory rising star. He is currently chief of staff for Dominic Grieve MP. He has served David Davis in the same capacity and he will doubtless go far. In his recent book, The Assault on Liberty: what went wrong with rights (Fourth Estate), Raab flies a ...
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Crossing continents: transnational cases raise important issues
What have the son of a Liberian dictator, a rabidly anti-Jewish Australian and a Rwandan diplomat all got in common? They are all defendants where courts in one state are seeking, or have recently sought, to decide criminal liability for alleged actions in another. As such, they illustrate the best ...
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A hard act to follow
Lord Bingham was the perfect person to address the recent Conference of World City Bar Leaders.
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At the whim of Westminster
A UK bill of rights is unlikely to come soon, but there is still hope for the future. It is a pity – if only for the future of the idea of a British bill of rights – that Labour’s electoral hopes look so dire. In ...
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