All articles by Joshua Rozenberg – Page 14
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News
Ignoring PACE was not ‘brave’
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 ...
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No case to answer? Private prosecutions and prospects of conviction
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)?
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Defining the coroner’s role has been the work of centuries
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 ...
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Does new justice secretary’s lack of legal experience matter?
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 ...
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Religious beliefs should be respected - when rights are not impeded
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 ...
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New draft code does not go far enough
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 ...
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Asking the right questions
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.
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The National Archives is recruiting volunteers to update the statute book
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 ...
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Two High Court cases focus on the legality of assisted dying
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 ...
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Government must not ignore Strasbourg’s overtures on prisoner voting
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 ...
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Has attack warning come too late?
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 ...
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Marriage Foundation motives are laudable
Was Mr Justice Coleridge wise to arrange such a very public launch for his Marriage Foundation this week? Whether or not you support its aims - and I do, for reasons I will explain - you may well wonder whether a serving family judge should campaign for one kind of ...
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News
Balancing exercise: privacy and press freedom
Lord Grabiner QC is the lawyer you saw sitting in a row of seats behind Rupert Murdoch when the newspaper owner gave evidence to a Commons committee last July and ended up with a custard pie in his face. Grabiner was there because he chairs the management and standards committee ...
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Who’s in the running for top jobs at the ECtHR and Supreme Court?
By the time the courts adjourn for their next holiday break, we shall know who will be taking two highly influential judicial posts. The UK judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will sit on every case brought against the British government in Strasbourg. The president of the ...
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Breaking the silence
It is perhaps ironic that a lecture by a judge on when it might be appropriate for judges to speak to reporters should have remained unnoticed by reporters until two weeks after it was delivered.
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Reform could curtail Strasbourg
The government has high hopes of reaching an agreement in Brighton next month that will lead to major reforms to the European Convention on Human Rights and the court in Strasbourg that enforces it. Britain’s proposals are set out in a draft declaration which the government hopes will be approved ...
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Politicians appreciate the value of investigative journalism
What future does investigative journalism have in an age when reporters face arrest and courts develop privacy laws? That was the question raised in a report published last week by the House of Lords communications committee. The select committee’s starting point was that ‘responsible investigative journalism ...
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Media is permeating the judicial process
The Supreme Court seems to have settled down well at its new home in Parliament Square. In the main courtroom, frosted glass has been installed on the doors behind the judicial bench so that spectators can no longer gaze into one of the judges’ rooms. The judges’ microphones are now ...
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UK courts have misunderstood a fundamental provision of the Human Rights Act
‘Cameron tells Euro judges to stop meddling in British justice,’ the Mail on Sunday headlined its well-sourced report at the weekend. Anticipating the prime minister’s speech to the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly on Wednesday afternoon, the newspaper said that David Cameron would demand major reforms to the European Court ...
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Proposed procedures are misguided
Government moves that would further undermine open justice have been attacked by the very lawyers on whom ministers rely to support the existing system of closed courts. It’s a major setback for the security service, which persuaded justice secretary Kenneth Clarke to endorse the reforms in a green paper on ...