Law

Thursday

Alex Massie

Hail Caledonia: Fantasy Justice and Offensive Behaviour at Football. The Horror Continues.

Two years have passed since the SNP won its landslide election victory, leaving Alex Salmond master of all devolved territories. Two years notable for the absence of significant legislative achievement. Given the consequences of government legislation this is not necessarily something to be regretted. Nevertheless, Mr Salmond is no FDR or LBJ (again, a good thing too you may say). The exception to this record of legislative lethargy is, of course, our old friend the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act. Readers may recall that I am no fan of this illiberal, pernicious, dismal piece of legislation (my most recent post on it is here). Nothing that has

David Blackburn

Bring on the drones – the Supreme Court has changed the way we fight wars

On the face of it, the Supreme Court’s decision to allow three suits to be brought against the Ministry of Defence is surprising, almost shocking. My colleague Alex Massie has castigated the judgment; but, while I don’t necessarily disagree with Alex’s sentiments, the judgment merits very close attention. It is a politically far-reaching decision. The Court was asked to consider whether British military personnel on active duty overseas are under the jurisdiction of the European Convention of Human Rights. If they are, then the British state has a duty to secure the human rights of its overseas personnel (specifically their right to life under article 2 of the Convention) as

Thursday

Harry Mount

Take it from a former barrister: Chris Grayling is right to reform legal aid

Shakespeare took it a little far in Henry IV, Part II, when Dick the Butcher said, ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’ Chris Grayling hasn’t made the same proposal but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, listening to the howls of anguish and indignation coming from the Inns of Court. Grayling, the first non-lawyer to be made Lord Chancellor since the 17th century, has simply said he wants to make some savings in the legal aid bill. To the lawyers, unaccustomed to having their privileges and subsidies challenged by anyone, this means war. Already, 90 millionaire QCs — poor, impoverished Cherie Blair among them — have written a letter to

Johan Norberg Johan Norberg

Why Sweden has riots

  Stockholm  ‘All of them should have been very happy,’ Robert A. Heinlein begins his 1942 novel Beyond This Horizon. The material problem has been solved on this future earth, poverty and disease have been eradicated, work is optional. And yet parts of the citizenry are not enthusiastic. Some are bored, others are preparing a revolt. Why should that be, in such a utopian world? A similar puzzlement has been the dominant reaction from commentators after riots broke out and cars and buildings were burned in heavily immigrant-populated suburbs of Stockholm in late May. Sweden? Since the standard interpretation is that violence is the only weapon the marginalised have against

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

How social media helps authoritarians

Have you heard? Do you know? Are you, as they say, ‘in the loop’? When the Mail on Sunday said a ‘sensational affair’ between ‘high profile figures’ close to Cameron had ‘rocked’ No. 10, did you have the faintest idea what it was talking about? I did, but then I’m a journalist. Friends in the lobby filled me in on a story which had been doing the rounds for months. I even know which law stopped the Mail on Sunday  following the basics of journalism and giving its readers the ‘whos’, ‘whats’, ‘whens’, ‘whys’ and ‘hows’. (Although with most affairs the ‘whys’ are self-evident. It is the ‘whos’ and, for

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Theatre review: Below par Mamet is still more fun than a personal-best performance from a second-rater

Mamet is back. His 2009 play Race is an offbeat courtroom drama set entirely in a lawyers’ office before the trial begins. Jack and Henry are two hotshot attorneys, one white, one black, who must decide whether to accept the case of a prosperous banker, Charles, accused of raping a black woman in a hotel. Jack and Henry have a young black trainee, Susan, whose ethnicity and gender may help them sway the jury. The case against Charles turns on sequins. The victim swears that her dress was torn off during the attack but a hotel cleaner found no sequins on the floor. Sequinned attire is naturally deciduous, or, as

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

What can society learn from the ‘grooming’ scandals?

The verdicts have been delivered in the Operation Bullfinch trial. Seven of the nine men have been found ‘guilty’. The case involved the highly organised sexual and physical abuse of underage girls in the ‘care’ system. This was carried out by a gang of men in Oxfordshire over the course of nearly a decade. As I wrote of one of the most shocking aspects of the case: ‘One of the victims sold into slavery was a girl of 11. She was branded with the initial of her “owner” abuser: “M” for Mohammed. The court heard that Mohammed “branded her to make her his property and to ensure others knew about

Thursday

Stephen Pollard

The Queen’s speech can’t repeal the Law of Unintended Consequences

Last week, the European Commission voted to ban three pesticides which are said to harm bees. Everyone loves bees, so perhaps we should all be rejoicing? Well, I’m afraid my reaction was not joy, but to think: here we go again, this is bound to mean more dead bees. It’s inevitable: whether it’s a ban, an order or a reform, it doesn’t matter. When governments act they almost always forget the golden rule of public policy: the Law of Unintended -Consequences. And guess what? Just a few days after the vote, scientists are pointing out that the ban will mean farmers using older chemicals that are even more harmful to

Wednesday

Elliot Gold

Reform human rights to save human rights

The European Convention of Human Rights is developed and interpreted as times change; but is there a democratic imbalance when only lawyers and judges can do this? Particularly where the rights being litigated are not just matters of strict law but properly political issues. It is a valid democratic concern that the Human Rights Act, which brought the European Convention into our own law, may encourage political questions to be converted into legal questions, taken to an unelected judge rather than to Parliament. Such wider political questions affect not just the rights of the individual but of society at large – and many consider that their voices on such matters

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Another weird sacking

Another teacher has been sacked for what looks like a wholly fatuous and unjust reason; these stories come in at the rate of about two a week. Christopher Hammond, head of German at a private girls’ school in Reading, was booted out for having taken photographs of his pupils on a school trip. Or, at least, on the technicality of taking them on his own camera rather than using a ‘memory card or school-owned device’. None of the photos were remotely indecent, nor was there any suggestion he might be a bit of a wrong ‘un on the quiet. Leaving Mr Hammond’s case aside, I wonder if these weird sackings

Friday

Alex Massie

Vicky Pryce and the Usefulness of the Not Proven Verdict

Like John Rentoul, I think much of the scoffing and chortling at the expense of the poor jury asked to consider Vicky Pryce’s guilt (or innocence!) is misplaced. This was an unusual case. The questions* they asked – which have been much mocked – seem entirely reasonable to me. More than that, they’re quite intelligent. “Reasonable doubt” for instance is not necessarily an obvious thing to measure or define. As for their conduct demonstrating that the Great British public is incapable of jury service, well, phooey to that. In any case, in both the legal systems that apply on these islands, the vast majority of trials do not involve juries

Tuesday

Nick Cohen

Arraigning a corpse

Part 1 “Russian Justice” A judge at Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court stopped the trial of Sergei Magnitsky (above) yesterday – but not because the defendant was dead. Magnitsky’s demise was of no concern to the judge. It did not bother him in the slightest. The court merely postponed proceedings until 4 March when the world will see something rarely seen since the Middle Ages: a prosecutor arraigning a corpse. The Putin regime – that mixture of autocracy and gangsterism – is desperate to discredit the late Mr Magnitsky and his employer, Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital. If you don’t know the story, I’ll explain why. Browder exposed corruption in Russian

Monday

David Blackburn

Government will appeal controversial immigration decision

Further to the row that has erupted between Theresa May and some judges over the deportation of foreign criminals, the government is understood to be applying to appeal the case of MF. The Home Secretary is plainly confident that her arguments will be well received in the Court of Appeal, having been found wanting in the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). The issue of deporting foreign criminals has been cast by some as a disagreement between senior judges and their more activist juniors, and not merely a clash between different arms of government. Theresa May’s team have been at pains to point out that the majority of senior judges support her case. Indeed, May

Wednesday

Thomas Duggins

Adultery and the same-sex marriage bill

Nadine Dorries said during the debate on same sex marriage last week that ‘This bill in no way makes a requirement of faithfulness from same-sex couples. In fact, it does the opposite’. Her rather surprising claim stems from the government’s plans to maintain the current definition of adultery in the equal marriage bill. Although not defined in statute, case law defines adultery as sexual intercourse between persons of the opposite sex. So while a heterosexual man can be divorced on the basis of unfaithfulness with another woman, a homosexual man could not on the basis of unfaithfulness with another man. The definition of adultery has caused legislators a collective headache

Saturday

Nick Cohen

Scientologists trap us in the closet

Whenever I give lectures on my book on censorship – Whaddya mean you haven’t read it? Buy it here at a recession-beating price – I discuss the great issues of the wealthy to silence critics, the conflict between religion and freedom of thought and the determination of dictators to persecute dissenters. These themes have animated great philosophers. None more so, I continue, than Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, who managed to get them all into one cartoon. In a 2005, they broadcast an episode entitled Trapped in the Closet. The little boy Stan goes to one of the Scientologists’ personality testing centres. His “Thetan” levels

Friday

Douglas Murray

When will the government confront the EU?

Here is a story that should have got far more attention. A story that perfectly epitomises the corruption and anti-democratic activity of the EU. In 2010 the group NGO Monitor – which seeks to hold NGOs to account – petitioned the European Commission to reveal details of the NGOs it has funded in recent years.  As readers will know, much of the government-funded NGO business is a racket, and one which pushes highly specific political agendas. And so it has been in recent years with funding from the EU. In particular, as NGO Monitor has previously shown, there is the little matter of the European Commission funding rabidly anti-Israel groups

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Gordon Wilson, a hero for our times

If there was any justice in the world, Yorkshire pensioner Gordon Wilson would feature in the New Year’s Honours list – but I suppose it’s too much to hope for. The Wilkcockson family, from Hunmanby,  kept noticing that their pussycats were going missing, never to return – but they did not suspect the kindly old gentleman living next door. Mr Wilson, however, was outraged that these noisome creatures were crapping all over his lovely garden and had constructed special wood and steel mesh traps baited with tuna fish. Having ensnared Tibbles et al he would then release the animals “in the countryside”, ie presumably in close proximity to an arterial

Wednesday

Nick Cohen

In praise of the bloody-minded Paul Chambers

What freedoms we have in Britain have not come as a rule from revolutions and thunderous declarations of the rights of man. More often than not, our liberties have come because bloody-minded and obstinate men and women have squared their shoulders and decided to fight an arbitrary decision, when others would have surrendered. Paul Chambers has the right to claim a good deal of credit for compelling the Director of Public Prosecutions to stop treating offensive but harmless remarks as crimes. I won’t go through his case in detail because I have told his story elsewhere. But in brief Paul was planning to fly to Belfast to visit a woman

Thursday

Rod Liddle

‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’

Given that David Cameron, rightly, seems to believe Lord Leveson’s recommendations are a crock of shit, what was the point of the inquiry in the first place? To show that something was being done? To give people like the hilarious Coogan a day in the sun, and that smug prolix lawyer who thought he was James Mason in The Verdict? We have to stop handing things over to lawyers and judges. Journalists are bad enough, but these people are even more thieving, grasping, self-righteous and utterly out of touch with public opinion. Too much time is given over to what they have to pronounce, too much weight given to their

Sunday

David Blackburn

Rotherham’s ‘political commissars’ reinforce the need for a free press

‘Clearly she has morphed somewhere in her career from social worker to political commissar.’ These are the words of Minette Marrin, writing of the social worker at the centre of the fostering scandal at Rotherham Council in the Sunday Times. Marrin’s article unpicks Rotherham Council’s position, turns it over and concludes that: ‘[The] thoughtless, obstinate political correctness of the Joyce Thacker (Rotherham’s senior social worker) variety is rampant throughout social services. Many of them are highly politicised in plain party-political terms as well. It’s a national disgrace and a national disaster. In adoption, for instance, it is such misguided attitudes that make it so very difficult for a child in