All articles by Joshua Rozenberg – Page 15
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Lord chief justice allowed himself to be labelled 'enemy of free speech'
Taking on the media is never a good idea if you happen to be a member of the judiciary. While judges are required to be fair, logical and impartial, reporters and commentators are often inaccurate, opinionated and driven more by commercial needs than by lofty ...
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Lady Justice Hallett could become the first woman lord chief justice
Lady Justice Hallett’s handling of the London bombing inquests has done her chances of becoming the next lord chief justice no harm at all. There isn’t a vacancy, of course, and Lord Judge, who celebrates his 70th birthday next week, is on excellent form. ...
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Privacy law, not injunctions, should be on press's agenda
The press worked itself up into a predictable lather of self-righteousness last week as editors saw their circulation figures threatened by privacy laws. Firmly in their sights were what they called ‘super-injunctions’ - although an injunction whose existence may be reported is no more a ...
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Likely appointment of Jonathan Sumption to Supreme Court is controversial
What does it take to become a justice of the UK Supreme Court? According to its president, Lord Phillips, those who applied for the most recent vacancies had to demonstrate independence of mind, integrity, intellectual ability, clarity of thought, an ability to work under pressure, ...
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Having faith in judicial institutions
Why do we have such faith in judicial institutions that sometimes get things wrong? The question was posed last week by Stephen Breyer, a justice of the US Supreme Court, speaking in London at an event arranged by the Bingham Centre for the Rule ...
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Web redefines relationship between journalism and the law
Write an article for publication these days and the chances are that it will attract ill-informed comments. No longer content with sending in a letter to the editor and waiting to see if it is printed, readers now demand an instant right of reply on the publisher’s website. ...
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Supreme Court backing of Twitter reflects badly on mainstream media
Why did the Supreme Court announce last week that it was offering what its president, Lord Phillips, describes as ‘a green light to tweeting and other forms of [text-based] communication’? There have never been any restrictions on sending texts from the Supreme Court or, until recently, ...
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There should be no rigid threshold determining a prisoner’s right to vote
Spare a thought for Mark Harper, junior minister at the Cabinet Office who is responsible for political and constitutional reform. A chartered accountant by training, he finds himself responsible for reducing the number of his fellow MPs; for introducing fixed-term parliaments; and for answering the unanswerable West Lothian question. But ...
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Has Nick Clegg been 'mugged by reality' on control orders?
Will the government abolish control orders? Or are unconvicted terrorist suspects still going to have their movements and contacts restricted under these much-criticised ‘gag and tag’ orders? ‘Control orders cannot continue in their current form,’ insisted the deputy prime minister last week. ‘They must be replaced.’ ...
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Disgraced MPs broke new legal ground last week
The hour before lunch last Friday was a bad one for two former Labour MPs. First, the High Court ruled that an election court had acted lawfully when it found Phil Woolas guilty of an ‘illegal practice’. There was just time to hear Woolas announce that he would not be ...
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Lord chief justice fears new threats to jury trial
There must have been sighs of relief at the Ministry of Justice last week when officials realised that they would not be required to abolish trial by jury. The threat this time was not from the department’s grandly titled Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses. Louise Casey’s absurd demand this month ...
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Concern over use of 'Henry Vlll' powers to overturn acts of parliament
The coalition’s approach to legislation is neither conservative nor liberal. That much is clear from the new Quangos (Bonfire) Bill, or the Public Bodies Bill as it is more properly called in parliament. It is through this legislation that the government intends to reform nearly 500 ...
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New book offers intriguing analysis of role of feminist judges
Is it possible to be both a judge and a feminist? That’s the intriguing question posed by Baroness Hale in her foreword to a fascinating new book, Feminist Judgments from Theory to Practice (Hart Publishing, £22.95). Hale is, of course, the UK’s most senior woman judge. ...
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UK still has a judiciary to be proud of
The formal reprimand issued to His Honour George Bathurst-Norman last week is the most serious of the disciplinary powers available to the lord chief justice in cases of judicial misconduct, short of suspension or removal from office. Those latter powers would not have been appropriate for Bathurst-Norman because he had ...
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Will the Supreme Court survive the coalition's purge of public bodies?
Tomorrow, the UK Supreme Court celebrates its first anniversary. Might it also be the court’s last? According to proposals leaked from the Cabinet Office and published by the BBC last week, the future of Britain’s highest court was still shrouded in uncertainly as recently as 26 August.
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The Law Commission wants to move from criminal to civil penalties
What is the criminal law for? That deceptively simple question was addressed recently in a masterly paper by Professor Jeremy Horder, issued just a few days before he completed his term as the commissioner responsible for advising ministers on reform of the criminal law. As a ...
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Are Supreme Court justices more assertive than they were as law lords?
The president of the Supreme Court and his second-in-command could be forgiven for the enthusiasm with which they welcomed reporters to an end-of term briefing last week. ‘We think our first year has been a success,’ said Lord Phillips, with justifiable pride. The move from ...
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The MoJ’s structural reform plan replaces targets with timetables
At last, we have some idea of what the Ministry of Justice is planning to do during the coming months. It was one of the first departments to publish its so-called structural reform plan, setting out how it will implement the coalition agreement. We can gloss ...
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Does the UK need a comprehensive constitutional framework?
This week’s announcement of a referendum on whether MPs should be elected under the alternative vote system is the latest example of Britain’s piecemeal approach to constitutional reform. Surely we should step back and take a broader view of how we govern the UK?
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MPs' expenses abuse case raises issues fundamental to the rule of law
Three former MPs and a peer will ask the Court of Appeal next week to rule that the Crown court has no jurisdiction to try them on charges of false accounting. Elliott Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield deny supplying false information in support of their expenses claims. ...