All articles by Michael Cross – Page 123
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News
Chilling effect
As a media legal scandal, it didn’t amount to much: no superinjunctions, celebrities or retired police horses. But my one (so far - touch wood) experience of being sued for defamation as a journalist illustrates an important shortcoming of the government’s current proposals for libel reform.
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Opportunities in Colombia
Colombia: isn’t it a bit dicey? Lawyers in Latin America’s fourth-largest economy and deepest-rooted democracy could be forgiven for showing irritation at the inevitable question. Invariably, the reply is ‘things have changed’.
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A swift and sure way to computer disaster
Here we go again. Just two years after a new government promised to break with Labour’s record of IT-based policy fiascoes, along comes a high-profile public policy reform which looks set to go down the same dismal road. The success of the revolution set out in the Swift and Sure ...
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Cool reaction to European patent unification
Leading intellectual property lawyers in the UK have reacted coolly to the unitary patent and unified patent court process approved by the European parliament on Tuesday. ‘No one can doubt that having a single system is, in principle, a good idea,’ said Claire Bennett, partner in international firm DLA Piper's ...
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Cry freedom of information
The eyes of the news media have been elsewhere, but the House of Commons justice committee has just restated an important constitutional principle: freedom of information is a good thing. A long-awaited post-legislative review of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 concludes: ‘We do not believe that there has been ...
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Hopes rise for legal services in EU-US free trade deal
Free trade talks between the EU and US are almost certain to end with agreement freeing up the movement of lawyers, a leading European figure in the campaign to remove barriers has predicted. Louis-Bernard Buchman, chair of the International Legal Services committee of the Council of Bars and Law Societies ...
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What the election result will mean for the legal profession
Unless they are unusually concentrated in marginal constituencies, the votes of UK solicitors are unlikely to swing the outcome of the general election in three weeks’ time. However, the main parties’ manifestos have much to say about the law (especially where it relates to crime, human rights and civil liberty), ...
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Fear and loathing in libel reform
To put it mildly, this is not a good time for politicians to be seen doing favours for media proprietors. Yet this is inevitably how the upcoming debate on libel reform - expected to be kicked off with a bill in the Queen’s speech in May - is going to ...
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Iraq: fragile justice
Nearly 10 years after regime change, seven years since the first democratic elections and despite several billion dollars worth of targeted aid, the rule of law in Iraq ranges from fragile to non-existent. In one of the first tests of Europe’s Common Security and Defence Policy, a small and little-known ...
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Maggie Maggie Maggie! In in in!
The last time I was in the same room as Margaret Thatcher, several hundred Japanese businessmen were there, too. It was Tokyo, September 1989, the high noon of Japan's economic power. World leaders were passing through every week to pay homage to the yen, but prime minister Thatcher was different. ...
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People’s peers
Anyone for ping-pong? Yes, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill is back in the Lords this week, for the upper house to pick over its wounded amendments following their savaging last week in the Commons. In the end, of course, the Commons will get its way. As ...
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Review: me and my shadow
Crying all the way to the bank: Liberace v Cassandra & Daily Mirror Revel Barker Revel Barker, £15.99 It was the titanic clash between bluff, folksy 1940s British decency and glitzy, globetrotting 1950s celebrity, played out in the High Court in London. Guess who won. In its way, the 1959 ...