Tag: Law

Friday fiascos

A couple of matters caught my attention this morning, from the world of journalism and coffee shops.

Hard Brexit is dead. Long live … hard Brexit

I keep hearing that last Friday’s agreement between the UK and the EU 27 means that a hard Brexit is off the table. Well, I’m looking at the table and I can still a hard Brexit resting atop it.

A pressing need for regulation …

In 2012, when I clicked on a link in order to watch a family friend appear in front of the Leveson Inquiry, I little realised just how much the subject of press regulation would get under my skin. Sometimes in a good way. But, all too often, it’s more like formication.

Brexit: supreme logic required

Much has been written about the Government’s appeal to the Supreme Court in the Brexit case. Political commentators tell us that the appeal is very likely to fail. Many lawyers think otherwise.

Moses and the Culture Secretary

It has been a strange week for those of us who took a keen interest in press regulation as a result of the Leveson Inquiry.

It’s lawyers v politicians in the battle for human rights

The Conservative Party has published plans to change Britain’s human rights law. They have been criticised by many lawyers. But, whilst the politicians may have got the law wrong, many lawyers seem to have got the politics wrong. It is an unattractive position for an intelligent society to find itself in and leads to meaningless arguments between those who should know better.

The search for Ashya is over. Now we search for answers.

It must be right that the police went looking for a young child when alerted by doctors that his life might be in danger. But when they found him, all thinking seems to have stopped.

Victim statements: are they having the wrong impact?

In an episode of The West Wing from 2002, the (fictional) US President. Jed Bartlet, prepares for a presidential debate by considering how he should answer a question designed to challenge his opposition to capital punishment: “If your youngest daughter, Zoe, was raped and murdered, would you not want to see the man responsible put to death?”

Testing times for the Director of Public Prosecutions

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Alison Saunders, says that juries apply a “much higher test” than prosecutors do when deciding whether to pursue a case. If that is true, it seems bizarre. More likely, it betrays a lack of logic on the part of the DPP.

Journalists in a tiz at Supreme Court’s win-win decision

I’m not sure quite how to say this. So I’ll say it twice:

Yesterday, a young graduate won her claim against the government’s back-to-work scheme. She argued that the regulations and the manner of their implementation were unlawful. Despite taking its case all the way to the Supreme Court, the government lost on three separate grounds.