https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/09/andrew-malkinson-was-right-to-expose-these-ministers-why-do-they-keep-punishing-innocent-people

".. hardly any of the people who are wrongly convicted are getting compensation. From 2017 to 2022, of the 346 applications for compensation by miscarriage of justice victims, only 13 were granted – less than 4%. Innocent people who have spent many years in prison have been left on the scrapheap"

#MiscarrageOfJustice #compensation #UKlaw

Anti-protest laws and culture wars weakening UK’s democracy, finds report https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/02/anti-protest-laws-and-culture-wars-weakening-uks-democracy-finds-report #uklaw #ukpol

Interim injunctions - Britain's latest weapon in the war against dissent | George Monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/29/punishment-without-trial-britain-civil-injunctions-climate-activists #UKlaw #climate #protest #activism

In its first year the one-man thinktank has:

* Questioned the tax affairs of Nadhim Zahawi in a saga that ended with the Conservative party chair being sacked.
* Campaigned against and highlighted the unfair treatment of subpostmasters in the Post Office’s Horizon IT scandal
* Suggested that Premier League football clubs may have avoided paying £250m in tax.
* Called out retailers failing to pass on the cut in the so-called tampon tax to customers.
* Forced the Solicitors Regulation Authority to warn the profession against pursuing “abusive litigation” designed to “harass or intimidate” their opponents into silence. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/25/im-embarrassed-about-how-horribly-overpaid-i-was-tax-campaigner-dan-neidle #Uklaw #tax

A (still experimental) substack post on disregards and pardons

https://jamesahand.substack.com/p/extension-of-disregards-and-pardons

#UKLaw (or rather E&W) #EqualityLaw

Elkan Abrahamson, who represents the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, which is a core participant at the inquiry, said the dispute between the government and the inquiry over texts and other documents had become “an existential struggle”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/05/covid-inquiry-chair-may-have-to-quit-denied-access-johnson-whatsapps

He said if the inquiry did not receive the potential evidence “the only logical response of the chair is to resign because she can’t properly do her job”. #COVID19 #UKpol #UKlaw

NHS data breach: trusts shared patient details with Facebook without consent https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/27/nhs-data-breach-trusts-shared-patient-details-with-facebook-meta-without-consent #privacy #health #uklaw

#UKLaw Masto - I assume #BorisJohnson would just be due more fines if found guilty of breaching #LockDown regulations.

Any prospect of additional charges being brought if it turns out that in his previous dealings with the police, regarding his previously investigated breach of regulations, he had lied to the police and said there were no other occasions?
Making a false statement to the police or some such?

#Law #Legal #UKpolitics

Appointment of 163 new Recorders (casual / part-time (sitting 30 days a year) Crown and County Court judges) announced today and appointed as of 30 May

https://www.judiciary.uk/appointments-and-retirements/recorder-appointments-3/

the gender split is near parity (45.4 (f):54.6 (m))

Crime makes up around 66% (Civil 5% and Family 28%) of the deployment

KCs are just under 8% and Drs just over 1%

#Judiciary #Diversity #UKLaw (or, rather, Eng&Wales)

@wood5y @MickG59

They might have a case.

Although the simple defence might in turn be that the Authority has the power under that Act to specify names in both English and Welsh, and it has chosen "Bannau Brycheiniog National Park" and "Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog" respectively.

If anyone challenges the idea of the former being English, all of the placenames in England that are in languages no-one even speaks any more will be a fun point.

#UKLaw #WelshLanguage #toponymy

@johnflomax

Richard Holme's discussion of "subjecthood" is interesting to read 30 years later, by the way.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41375877

#UKLaw #UKPolitics #UKMonarchy

@johnflomax Heh! Modern (i.e. turn of the 21st century) #UKLaw wisdom is that no two authorities will even agree on which statutes and whatnot even _are_ "the constitution". A specific written enumeration of rights and duties? Most legal scholars would say it in a roundabout and more formal way, but it would boil down to "You're dreaming, old son!"

Here's a 30-page article from 2013 that goes all around the houses to say that: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24694077

(-:

Joe Sekhon has also provided evidence to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee on regulating intellectual property post-Brexit

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/110199/pdf/

#IPLaw #UKLaw

@TheodoraMorpeth

Quite! It was the most appalling illogical uninformed nonsense sometimes. Not just the social attitudes like this, but the utter twaddle that supposedly explained how U.K. law and "the English Constitution" (to quote Amos) worked and was better than everyone else's.

Modern textbooks have vastly improved on this. The 1994 posthumously revised version of Finer's Five Constitutions (Bogdanor&Rudden) takes a very different tack.

@asymetricjockey @kennethb @pennine #UKLaw

@asymetricjockey

Don't read the books from those legal people, then, for health. (-:

I have some of the older texts on this, peddling all sorts of chauvinistic self-deluding rubbish. I have one by Maurice Amos KBE KC published in 1930 that (I kid you not!) on pp 2-3 makes the argument that the House Of Lords defends democracy from the House Of Commons and the "inadequacies of general elections"; & calls the abolition of men-only hereditary peerages Radicalism.

@kennethb @pennine

#UKLaw

@kennethb

I have additional bad news for you. The whole "constitutional monarchy" idea was a bit of a 19th century lie that British legal experts liked to peddle. It isn't nearly so convincing to legal people today as it was in the days of Queen Victoria.

@asymetricjockey @pennine

#UKLaw

@kennethb

Presidents are far _more_ limited than monarchs, not the other way around.

They get separated from legislatures, the courts don't run in their name, they can be taken to court, they don't get to originate bills, they usually don't get to either summon or dissolve the legislature, they're usually not even the head of the executive.

#UKLaw

@asymetricjockey @pennine

@kennethb

You have it precisely backwards. A monarchy is the one with the vast unlimited powers. The Crown-In-Parliament can do _anything that it likes_, with no recourse.

There is no presidency on the planet that comes close, except for (as I said) the countries where a dictator, i.e. _a monarch_, calls xyrself a president and it's just a sham.

#UKLaw

@asymetricjockey @pennine

@pennine @asymetricjockey

It's simpler than that. In pretty much all presidential systems (discounting the countries where the entire constitution is a sham, obviously) the president isn't part of the legislature, so Rees-Mogg wouldn't have had the power to introduce a bill; and the president doesn't have the power to dissolve the legislature, so Johnson wouldn't have been able to do in the first place what got him into the Supreme Court, let alone have the power to abolish it.

#UKLaw

@asymetricjockey @pennine

That worry is illogical nonsense, though.

Johnson was stopped from dissolving Parliament by the Supreme Court and then wanted to abolish the Supreme Court. Rees-Mogg has introduced a repeal bill an order of magnitude larger than any other in history, that will cause legal chaos & have side-effects like making HTTP illegal in the U.K..

These two had huge powers under a monarchy, whereas in republics presidents don't have the power do to either of those.

#UKLaw