Tuesday 11 June 2013

How the most English of poems inspired a Scot to champion European Human Rights

How the most English of poems inspired a Scot to champion European Human Rights | UK Human Rights Blog: "The Convention was a legally enforceable treaty that created an international court to police the maintenance of basic human rights. For, as Nuremberg proved and recorded these rights were fragile and vulnerable.
Of course the rights listed in the Convention were crudely hewn. It would take, and will take years of cases at the court to define and refine the interaction between human rights and the state.
As Maxwell Fyfe recognised: "The difficulty of course is that human lawyers are not the creators but only the interpreters or codifiers of these fundamental human rights. Opinions differ widely as to their precise definitions"
The Convention has fed 60 years of public debate about conflicting and emergent rights, many of which would have astonished the authors. And that is what they had intended.
It can be argued that the Convention was made in Gray’s Inn as Shawcross, Lauterpacht and Maxwell Fyfe were all barristers there. The Human Rights Lawyers association is holding a celebration of the signing of the Convention later this month." 'via Blog this'

The role of lawyers in public life - ECHR

The role of lawyers in public life - Speeches - Inside Government - GOV.UK: "In the period between the Congress at The Hague, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the Council of Europe, David Maxwell Fyfe was involved in drafting the Convention, with the assistance of academic lawyers from Oxford and Cambridge University. That first draft covered what Maxwell Fyfe described as the “basic decencies of life” - security for life and limb, freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom from slavery and compulsory labour, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of marriage, the sanctity of the family, equality before the law, and freedom from arbitrary deprivation of property.
By August 1950, the Assembly agreed the draft Convention. The Times reported an important aspect of the new Convention: that it was not to be a collection of mere aspirations and platitudes. It was to be matter of real, enforceable, law. The Times report says: “The committee’s insistence on the convention was based on the fact that it stated human rights not as vague generalities, but in terms that could be enforced by a court of law.”" 'via Blog this'

Thursday 6 June 2013

The Constitution of the Public Sphere: the post-Leveson Landscape (W G Hart Legal Workshop 2013)

IALS Events / Institute of Advanced Legal Studies: "24 June 2013 - 25 June 2013
Directors:  Dr Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin and Dr Andrew Scott, London School of Economics. 
Plenary speakers: Geoffrey Robinson QC; Philip Coppel QC, Landmark Chambers; Professor Tom Gibbons, Univerisyt of Manchester;  Professor John Horgan, Irish Press Ombudsman; Michael McManus, Director of Transition, Press Complaints Commission; 
Professor Chris Marsden, University of Sussex;  Professor Leslie Moran, Birkbeck, University of London; Professor Alastair Mullis, University of East Anglia; Gill Phillips, Director of Editorial Legal Services, Guardian News and Media Ltd;  Professor Gavin Phillipson, University of Durham;  Professor Colin Scott, University College Dublin;  Hugh Tomlinson QC, Matrix Chambers; Professor Lorna Woods, City University London;  and a further 25 papers given in parallel sessions.
Organised by: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies" 'via Blog this'