Law

By caving in to religious misogyny, ‘anti-racist’ liberals reveal their inner racist

Even by the low standards of English lawyers, the men and women who run the Law Society have behaved like shameless hypocrites. Instead of confining themselves to offering professional advice, they set themselves up as Islamic theologians. In a practice note on Sharia-compliant wills, the Law Society advised the 125,000 solicitors in England and Wales to urge Muslim clients to discriminate against women, non-Muslims, adopted and ‘illegitimate’ children. ‘Male heirs [should] in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir,’ it said, and ‘non-Muslims may not inherit at all’. Likewise ‘illegitimate and adopted children are not Sharia heirs’ and should not be left a penny. The Law

Fort Lauderdale’s law against feeding the homeless still isn’t America’s dumbest

States of criminality A 90-year-old Florida man feeding the homeless was arrested under a Fort Lauderdale law which makes it illegal to share food with members of the public. Other laws from the ‘Land of the Free’: — In Indiana you can be arrested for statutory rape if you are caught driving a car with a passenger under the age of 18 who is not wearing socks and shoes. — In Ocean City it is illegal to eat while swimming in the sea. — In New York State it is illegal to walk around on a Sunday with an ice cream cone in your pocket. — In South Dakota it

Chris Grayling is an advertisement for a Labour government

Thank heavens for Ed Miliband, eh? The leader of the opposition remains the single most compelling reason to hope the Conservatives remain in power next May. A shame, then, that cabinet ministers appear determined to promote the idea that a Labour victory would be garlanded with at least some silver promise. Chiefly, Chris Grayling would no longer serve as Justice Secretary. This is a non-trivial consideration that’s worth pondering before anyone casts their ballot next May. There is some dispute over whether the Conservative’s plans to rewrite Britain’s human rights legislation can really deliver all they promise; some disagreement, therefore, over whether they’re as dangerous as they initially appear. Is

Are Syria air strikes legal? Perhaps not, but why should we care?

‘Are Syria air strikes legal?’ asks the BBC as part of its lead story today. The answer is that nobody is very sure. But personally I do wonder: ‘Why should we even care?’ Is beheading people legal? Is crucifying people illegal? Probably not. But aside from some vague talk last month of international inspectors being sent in to Isis-controlled areas to try to collate evidence of war-crimes I have seen very little written about this. This debate over the ‘legality’ of hitting Isis reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation after Osama bin Laden was shot in the head. I recall back then being on an edition of Question Time where, rather than expressing

Muphry’s Law in action

‘Ineptocracy: Noun – A government characterised by incompetent leaders.’ A gloriously incompetent attack on incompetence, and the greatest example of Muphry’s Law that Mr S has seen in a long time. The old adage is that if you write anything criticising someone else’s writing, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written. On this occasion, Mr S thinks, we can extend that to questions of competence. Do we think the veteran leader of the Labour firebrands perhaps meant ‘passport‘?

Boris Johnson is not fit to be leader of the Tory party, never mind Prime Minister

Awkward, especially here, I know, but there you have it. But, look, if any other high-profile politician were suggesting the burden of proof in criminal trials should be switched from the accuser to the accused we’d be properly – in both senses – appalled. So we should be appalled that Boris suggests in his Telegraph column today that anyone travelling to Iraq or Syria should be presumed a jihadist unless and until they can prove otherwise. The state will not have to make a case you convict you but you must make a case to avoid conviction. And, lo, centuries of criminal law are undone. Worse still, I think, Boris considers this

The law’s an ass, obviously

‘The award of Queen’s Counsel is for excellence in advocacy in the higher courts,’ says the QC appointments page. ‘It is made to advocates who have rights of audience in the higher courts of England and Wales and have demonstrated the competencies in the Competency Framework to a standard of excellence.’ Given that, earlier today, the relatively unknown MP Jeremy Wright, who was recently appointed Attorney General, was sworn in as QC, Mr S suggests adding a few more lines to that description. Perhaps: ‘The award of Queen’s Counsel is also for those who have shown willingness to express whatever opinion their masters decree; even if that opinion is wholly at odds with those of every other

Britain has very little to fear from the ECHR. So why are so many Tories so afraid of it?

On matters domestic (England and Wales division) I was sad to see Dominic Grieve turfed-out of the cabinet in last week’s reshuffle. Today he pops up in the Times to remind us (well, me) why his departure has lowered the average level of decency in the cabinet. According to the former Attorney-General, the Prime Minister’s plans to rework Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights are the kind of cockamamie scheme that would, quite correctly, be considered laughable if it were copied by, say, Vladimir Putin. You see: “What actually is being suggested is not that we will leave the ECHR, but that we will announce for our manifesto that

Nick Cohen

Celebrating diversity means imposing misogyny

People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can ‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then, whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in both. If this sounds like the start of a patient exploration of a delicate philosophical distinction, don’t be deceived. There is nothing difficult to understand, and my

Lady Butler-Sloss should not lead the child abuse inquiry

Last week, Nick Cohen suggested that Lady Butler-Sloss was not the correct person to lead the child abuse enquiry. She has now resigned from her role.  The Guardian says today that Lady Butler-Sloss cannot be the right person to lead the inquiry into alleged child abuse. ‘Not only was her brother, Lord Havers, attorney general – and briefly lord chancellor – at the time of some of the allegations of cover-up. She is also of the same generation as those around whom rumours swirl. If she were still sitting as a judge, she would never contemplate being involved in a case that might touch, however remotely, on family or friends.’

How should we describe ‘assisted dying’?

There is, I realise, no perfect, neutral way of describing ‘assisted dying’, the substance of Lord Falconer’s bill which comes up for its second reading on 18th July. ‘Right to die’ is a bit tricky; dying is one of those rights that are thrust upon us without our even asking. It’s part of the human condition; just wait long enough, and it’s yours. And as Jenny McCartney eloquently makes clear in her piece on the subject, it’s actually assisted suicide — the assistance being provided by a doctor – or if you prefer, killing by request. As for the safeguards in the bill about it being limited to those with

If you thought this World Cup was weird, take a look at Brazil 1950

Old world Brazil has struggled to get ready for the World Cup, even though it hosted it before, in 1950. Some oddities of that tournament: — There was no final, as such. The winner was to be decided by a second group stage. But it came down to the last match, Brazil vs Uruguay, in which Brazil needed a draw and Uruguay a win. Uruguay won 2-1. — That match, at Rio do Janeiro’s Maracana stadium, still holds the record of the best-attended match in World Cup history, with 199,954 spectators. — Only 13 out of 16 teams who qualified turned up. Scotland could have gone but stuck to their

The starchy, conservative lawyer who freed every slave in England

Americans make movies about slavery and its abolition. In the past two years we’ve seen the Oscar-winning Twelve Years a Slave, based on a 19th-century slave narrative, and Django Unchained, with Christoph Waltz as a bounty-hunter who, uniquely among bounty-hunters of the period, did not make his living from capturing fugitive slaves. Spielberg’s Lincoln was about the Great Emancipator himself, as was the less historically rigorous Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But the abolition of slavery in England has never received the same attention. Perhaps it is because abolition here came not through blood and glory, but through the common law; or perhaps because emancipation does not frame constitutional debates here

Clement Attlee’s conversion

In the early 1960s, The Spectator ran a series called ‘John Bull’s first job’ – reminiscences by various prominenti about how they started out. One of the most startling, published in the 13 December 1963 issue, was by the former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, respectfully bylined ‘Lord Attlee’, on his time as a young barrister. His verdict on himself was characteristically terse and frank, and gives a vivid impression of a turning point in his life: ‘I got very few briefs and occasionally devilled for someone else, but made very little headway. I was at the time ridiculously shy. I was not really much interested in law and had

The equal pay bomb that could wipe out public sector jobs

I have just decided that my work is of equal value to that of the feminist supermodel Cameron Russell. Neither of us, admittedly, is quite as useful as a plumber, and I can’t claim to be of much use promoting swimwear. But otherwise I reckon we are a pretty close match. We both tart ourselves around and while my work doesn’t involve a lot of physical input, I would like to think that it requires a slightly higher contribution from the brain department. There then arises the question: should I not be paid as much as she is? Ludicrous? Perhaps, but no more so, I think, than what is going

Who judges the judges?

I like Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake of the Sunday Times. I will not pretend they are anything like close friends or family. I doubt if I see them more than once a year. But before you read any further you should know about our acquaintance. It is important for journalists to declare their interests. Readers must be free to make up their own minds, even if I believe – especially if I believe – that a friendship or family bond could never influence my writing. In a few days, the Sunday Times will apply for the right to appeal against a decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat from July last

A prenup undermines a marriage before it has even begun

A friend of mine, quite a distinguished lawyer, takes the view that marriage ceased to make sense after no-fault divorces came in. What, he says sternly, is the point of a contract when there’s no sanction if you break it? Well, quite. But if no-fault divorce pretty well invalidates marriage after the event, prenups do quite a good job of undermining it beforehand. The point of marriage is that it’s meant to be a lifetime affair – the hint being in the ‘til death do us part’ bit – and the point of prenups is that they make provision for the thing ending before it even gets underway. You’re putting

How legal aid reforms are clogging up the courts

Litigants in person – individuals representing themselves, rather than relying on a lawyer – have always been a feature in courts, and are the source of the aphorism ‘a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client’. While the profusion of courts means there are no easily available statistics as to their numbers, as late as 2011, about one fifth of cases featured litigants in person. Since the government slashed legal aid in April of last year, the number of them has exploded. While the funding for these cases has vanished, the right to go to court has not. The most recent set of figures is for autumn 2013 –

Being assaulted nearly put me on trial

Way back in the late 1990s, I spent a lot of time in court. What happened, see, was that in the wee small hours of a drunken Edinburgh morning, my friend Jonny and I took a shortcut home through the disused railway tunnel that runs under Holyrood Park. I’d been through it many times, being enraptured with the magic of abandoned urban spaces and, perhaps more to the point, stupid, but never before had it contained a gang of pissed-up youths on a rampage. This time it did, and they put us in hospital. Various arrests followed pretty swiftly. Scottish papers were interested, what with my father being in the

Will the women apologise to Rennard?

Well done Lord Rennard for not saying sorry. I thought at first that he should, just to get the whole thing over with, to partially placate those monstrously transgressed women who may once have had their personal space ‘violated’ by the bloke. But that was wrong. Stick to your guns and tell them to get stuffed. The Met Police found no case to answer when they investigated these allegations. An internal Lib Dem inquiry headed by a QC found similarly, despite Nick Clegg’s hope that it would nail the poor bugger and give him a convenient escape route. Now that the inquiry has said no action should be taken against