Round-up: three pieces to read on the appointment of the new Justice Secretary
11th May 2015 These three pieces on the new Lord Chancellor are worth reading: Gove’s intelligence will make him a very different justice secretary to Grayling by Andrew Neilson Why human rights reform...
View ArticleRound-up: five posts on the constitutional problems with Human Rights Act repeal
11th May 2015 From before the general election: Human Rights, Devolution and the Constrained Authority of the Westminster Parliament by Colm O’Cinneide Will devolution scupper Conservative plans for a...
View ArticleThe hurdles for Human Rights Act repeal now seem higher than before
25th May 2015 The new Conservative government’s plan to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and enact a replacement, apparently within one hundred days of the general election, was never going to be...
View ArticleLaw and policy round-up: Gove’s first speech, and so on
25th June 2015 Michael Gove has given his first major speech as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. It is worth reading carefully and in full. In tone and analysis it was a great...
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Michael Gove and the Lawyers’ Revolt
8th July 2015 Today, like yesterday, there will significant disruption in the criminal courts of England and Wales; and in the next few weeks this disruption is likely to get worse. The trigger was the...
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Gove must sort out bad MoJ policy making if he is to uphold the rule of law
9th July 2015 Following-on from yesterday’s post on the causes and possible consequences of the current lawyers’ revolt, this is my post today at the Financial Times on why Gove must sort out bad MoJ...
View ArticleOn Lord Falconer as shadow Lord Chancellor
What should we make of Lord Falconer’s appointment as shadow Lord Chancellor? I have tried to answer this in a post over at Solicitors Journal.
View ArticleThe “Bill of Rights” and a blank sheet of paper.
4th October 2015 There appears to be further slippage in the Tory proposals for repealing the Human Rights Act. Look at the following three quotes (with an emphasis added to each one): “The scrapping...
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Michael Gove “picks a fight” over the MoJ’s Saudi contract bid: the background
13th October 2015 The overnight news was dramatic: the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, has “picked a fight” in Cabinet. And the subject of this political spat? It would appear that...
View ArticleFT post on why the reference to ‘international law’ in the UK’s Ministerial...
26th October 2015 Following on from the story that was broken by my friend Nick Cohen on the deletion of regard to “international law” from the Ministerial Code, and also in response to the...
View ArticleThe prisons policy of a mischievous demon
8th February 2015 Prisons policy is in the news today. This is from my 2013 post at FT on custodial sentences: Here is a thought-experiment: imagine that you have asked some mischievous demon to...
View ArticleLaw and policy round-up: three points about Cameron’s prisons speech
9th February 2016 * Prisons policy Yesterday was a busy and perhaps significant day for prisons policy. The Prime Minister gave a speech devoted to the subject. The speech was even trailed with two...
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“Privacy is Surveillance”– Part 1 of the Investigatory Powers Bill
2nd March 2016 Yesterday the government put the Investigatory Powers Bill before parliament. (Note it is not a “draft” Bill – that was the last one. This is now the Bill (which is, in turn, a draft...
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Five things about David Cameron and sovereignty
9th March 2016 Here are five things to remember when you hear the Prime Minister praise the “sovereignty of parliament”. First, ministers and officials are encouraged to use statutory instruments as...
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Dear Mr Gove, bad Ministry of Justice policy making has not gone away
4th April 2016 Another policy failure of the Ministry of Justice becomes apparent: over at the Law Society Gazette, John Hyde has detailed how the MoJ has collected only a small proportion of the...
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