All articles by Roger Smith – Page 3
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OpinionEuro convention: don’t bring the house down
If we depart from the binding elements of the ECHR, we will depart like Samson.
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OpinionWar and law – again
A recent report makes a strong case for more transparent accountability over military decision-making.
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OpinionHolding the forces to account
The authors of a recent pamphlet on combat liability are right in one regard – the law in this area should be transparent.
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OpinionMiliband v Dacre
The clash between the Mail and Ed Miliband can teach us a lot about human rights and crisis management.
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OpinionLawyers well placed to lead democratic reform
Democracy comes complete with checks and balances – often articulated in the neutral language of the rule of law.
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OpinionInquiring minds
Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself on the same side as the Daily Mail on one of the great issues of the day
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Opinion
Legal aid proposals intended to strengthen the power of the state
No one can say that I have not done my bit for the profession
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News
Abu Qatada treaty a triumph for human rights
Omar Othman or Abu Qatada (‘The Palestinian’) is destined to hit the headlines at least a couple more times. Once will be when the Jordanian parliament ratifies a newly negotiated mutual legal assistance treaty with the UK (said to be imminent). And then again when he departs of his own ...
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News
Learning more about contracted public defence services
In the summer of 1998, I visited the US to look at contracted public defender schemes. This was triggered by the prediction that they would be the ultimate destination of the Legal Aid Board’s franchising initiative. Public defender horror stories, particularly in the south of the US, are easy to ...
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News
Hague’s concern sits ill with Tory agenda
You might have thought that an organisation called the Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice would not have much hope of a grant from a Tory cabinet minister. Too much resonance of Harriet Harman. Too much potential irony in how cuts, like those to legal aid, have been directed not against ...
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News
There are no short cuts when it comes to parliamentary sovereignty
Theresa May is no idol for human rights activists: home secretaries rarely are. She and Chris Grayling have caused much harrumphing by expressing their hostility to – either or both, it is not clear which – the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. A recent article ...
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News
European court pursues eastern offenders
I have been taken to task by a Gazette correspondent (R Breeze) who wants a more balanced account of the role of the European Court of Human Rights: ‘We are left with… the perception of an unchecked, bureaucratic body that saps national sovereignty and dabs its paws at whatever it ...
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News
What is to be done over convention?
My father – in my mind because, aged 93, he has just died – used to take me to rugby internationals at Murrayfield in the 1960s. These were dominated by much kicking for positional advantage. Games were, depending on your point of vantage, fascinatingly tactical or grindingly boring. That experience ...
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News
Prisoner voting debate no excuse for leaving Euro convention
Sometimes you just have to rant. I have spent near a lifetime teaching staff ‘to do lofty’, to conduct debate only in moderate tones. Then you encounter something like politicians posturing on prisoner voting. And the dam breaks. This is not only humbug: it is dangerous humbug.
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News
UK struggling to shake off taint of torture
There they were, side by side in Hatchards bookshop on the very day that the Supreme Court released its judgment in Rahmatullah v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Eliza Manningham-Buller’s Reith Lectures (Securing Freedom, Profile Books) and Ian Cobain’s Cruel Britannia: a secret history of torture (Portobello) ...
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News
Degree of discipline at party conference
Party conferences are difficult things for the majority parliamentary party. You have to rouse the faithful but the course of government is already set. One moment of temptation – by applause or a headline – and some department is stuck with an initiative that went down a storm in ...
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News
Analysis of budgets can be useful in implementation of rights
Work in a charity like Justice can get a trifle unremitting. But, just often enough to keep your spirits up, an invitation arrives out of the blue to something that looks worthwhile, or is at least set in an irresistible location (the combination of both is particularly cheering). Would I, ...
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News
International regulation of unmanned military drones needed
Let’s hear it for the Methodists. I declare an interest. I am from non-conformist stock on both sides - dour, pledge-signing, earnest folk. No surprise to me and my kind that the established church spent its recent synod counting the number of women bishops that you can get on the ...
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News
Theresa May is improperly cutting corners
Ministers could benefit from a short induction course on the constitution. Theresa May might then have been reminded of what she probably already knows: it is odd to threaten the judiciary in the terms that she just has on immigration. ‘If they don’t [pay heed to non-statutory provisions] then we ...
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News
Taint of torture remains despite overlay of legal process
Let me begin with an outrageous position for any lawyer - let alone one who once specialised in criminal defence. I believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) is guilty of conspiracy to murder 2,977 people in, and over, the US on 11 September 2001. What is much more outrageous is ...