All articles by Joshua Rozenberg – Page 17
-
News
Will parliamentary privilege protect ex-MPs from prosecution over expenses?
In a month’s time, lawyers for three former Labour MPs will try to persuade Mr Justice Saunders that he has no jurisdiction to try them on charges of false accounting.
-
News
Lord chief justice has emphasised the importance of judicial independence
If there is one legal issue that’s likely to make headlines during the election campaign, it is human rights. So there was some surprise when the lord chief justice touched on such a controversial topic in a speech released just a few days before the election was called – even ...
-
News
Scotland’s high street solicitors are on the march against ‘Tesco law’
The government wants to open up the legal market and give consumers more choice by lifting restrictions that prevent solicitors from working in business structures that include non-lawyers. Sounds familiar? Not when I tell you that the government’s plans were almost derailed last week by high ...
-
News
Proposals to restrict the right to prosecute ‘universal jurisdiction’ offences
Lawfare was first defined in 2001 as ‘the use of law as a weapon of war’. Last week, it was the focus of an important conference in New York organised by the newly-established Lawfare Project. The metaphor of war is never far from the courtroom. ...
-
News
Two assaults on press freedom have been defeated, but will anything change?
To anyone who follows parliamentary affairs, last week must have seemed a good one for the press. Potential threats to free speech melted away, not just once but twice. But I suspect that we are not much better off as a result.
-
News
Reaction to terrorism judgments has not inspired confidence
Maintaining the rule of law in the face of international terrorism is the greatest challenge our legal system faces. Over the past few weeks, the courts have shown themselves capable of delivering robust judgments. It’s what happened afterwards that inspires rather less confidence.
-
News
Lawyers who merit judicial appointment are not reaching the bench
When I was very young – in 1994, to be precise – I published a book in which I called on the lord chancellor to hang up at least one and preferably two of his three wigs. ‘We would then have an independent speaker in the House of Lords, an ...
-
News
Scottish court ruling raises questions about overturning legislation
Will the courts ever quash an act of parliament? The orthodox answer is, of course, ‘no’ – although there were hints to the contrary in the Jackson case of 2005 when the law lords dismissed a challenge to recent fox-hunting legislation. Earlier this month, though, ...
-
News
When it comes to paying bribes, can the end justify the means?
The biggest reforms to the law of bribery for more than a century will come under detailed scrutiny today as the government’s Bribery Bill begins its committee stage in the House of Lords. You would expect a bill of this sort to criminalise both the person ...
-
News
New laws strengthen the influence of the Law Commission proposals
For a body that exists to promote reform of the law, the Law Commission has surprisingly little legislation that it can call its own. There is little more than a statute enacted in 1965, setting up a body to review the law ‘with a view to its systematic development... simplification ...
-
News
New commission chairman planning to reform adult social care law
The Law Commission is planning ‘very important and potentially very exciting’ reforms to the law on social care for adults, the commission’s new chairman said in an interview for the Gazette. Sir James Munby, who now sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice Munby, ...
-
News
New Law Commission chairman planning to reform adult social care law
The Law Commission is planning ‘very important and potentially very exciting’ reforms to the law on social care for adults, the commission’s new chairman said in an interview for the Gazette. Sir James Munby, who now sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice Munby, ...
-
News
Why newspapers lack interest in court reporting
The name Mike Taylor is not one that many lawyers will recognise, even though he has spent his entire working life writing about the law. In an extraordinary 42 years at the Press Association law courts news service, he reported countless cases in the High Court, ...
-
News
Supreme Courts appointments process - need for change?
Arrangements to fill the 12th seat on the Supreme Court bench should be well under way by now, with no more applications being accepted for the vacancy.
-
News
An online legal information resource will provide a clear advantage
Take the slow train out of Leeds and head west, past Halifax. Just before you leave Yorkshire for Lancashire, you’ll find a picturesque village called Mytholmroyd – which you should pronounce like thyroid, not mistletoe. Climb the steep hill by the Methodist chapel, walk past ...
-
News
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?
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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.
-
News
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 ...