As a human rights lawyer with one of the busiest ‘claimant’ practices at the Bar, the Attorney General may once have jumped at every expansionist or overreaching interpretation of international law. He will now need often to do the opposite.
Liberty deserves its victory in this case, even if its account of the judgment is inaccurate: in no way did the regulations involve Government deciding what causes can lawfully be protested.
I doubt that the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment will help states better address climate change – but it certainly helps seal the case for states to withdraw from the ECHR.
They have been introduced in response to backbench pressure – with the Government seeming to accept the argument that the Bill as introduced was vulnerable to litigation. Parliament should accept them, but should be aware that some risks remain.
The continuing failure of our law of public protest was made vivid again last week, when Amanda Kelly, a District Judge, found four members of Insulate Britain not guilty of the offence of wilful obstruction of the highway.
Channel crossings are a specific challenge that warrant a robust response: the Home Secretary should be mandated to ensure all who arrive by such means are removed.
As drafted it would let many of those who block highways and vandalise property get away with it, just as they do today.
What is needed is legislation that would shift the default, making it mandatory for the Government to act and thus not leaving it with the option of stopping when Strasbourg objects.
The Court has simply made up its jurisdiction to provide interim relief. More specific to this case, it had no proper application before it.
Our international obligations do not oblige us to accept people attempting to reach this country from a safe country.
A new report argues that recent attacks on her decision have been neither fair nor well-judged.
Two recent judgments reflect the concerns about overreach we have covered at Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project.
There is much to be said for incremental reform, but too much caution can tip over into a failure to act boldly.
However, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill must be strengthened.
The Secretary General’s claim was obviously that the UK should not leave the ECHR because doing so would place it in company with Russia and Belarus. This was the “consequence” of which he warned, but whatever the clarification this is a false comparison