Law and Media Review of the Legal Year 2012/13

Law and Media Review of the Legal Year 2012/13 | Media law and ethics: "A review of legal cases and legal developments over the legal year, from September 2012 (just before the beginning of the legal year proper) until the end of July 2013 can be found on the Inforrm blog. The Inforrm case tables have also been brought up to date: Media Law cases; Defamation cases; and Privacy cases." 'via Blog this'

Turkish domestic judges wear political glasses: Turkish ECtHR judge

EUROPE - Turkish judges wear political glasses: Euro court judge: "Turkish judges wear "ideological glasses," as a majority of them believe that protecting the state is their fundamental job, according to Işıl Karakaş, a Turkish judge working at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
“I don’t know any such examples in European countries. How could a judge’s job be protecting the state? A French judge and a Turkish judge understand the public order differently. Our judges see their job as protection of the state,” said Karakaş, explaining what "ideological glasses" means.
She stated that Turkish judges stopped punishing the word “Mr. Öcalan” only after the ECHR found Turkey guilty on several occasions for such decisions. Calling the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan as “Mr. Öcalan” was seen as a crime on the grounds that it was “praising the criminal,” in several cases in Turkey." 'via Blog this'

Tulisa 'entrapped by Sun on Sunday' - letter to CMS Select Committee

Tulisa 'entrapped by Sun on Sunday' | Media | guardian.co.uk: "The manager of singer and TV celebrity Tulisa Contostavlos has written to the chairman of the culture and media select committee to complain about a Sun on Sunday sting operation on his client.
Jonathan Shalit's letter to Tory MP John Whittingdale expresses his "grave concern" about the article published on 2 June and the journalistic methods used to obtain it, arguing that it amounted to entrapment.
The front page story, headlined "Tulisa's cocaine deal shame", was billed as a "world exclusive" and written by the former News of the World investigations editor, Mazher Mahmood." 'via Blog this'

Social Media Prosecution Guidelines updated

Social Media Prosecution Guidelines: "The final guidelines are broadly similar to those published for consultation, although changes made following feedback to the consultation include:
Greater detail about communications targeting specific individuals, particularly making it clear that this category relates to communications that constitute harassment or stalking
Clarification that where a communication might constitute a credible threat of violence or harassment or stalking, prosecutors should consider whether the offence is racially or religiously aggravated or whether there is aggravation related to disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity and pay particular regard to the increase in sentence provisions
In cases where communications might be considered grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false that meet the high threshold for prosecution, guidelines have been amended to make clear that prosecutors should particularly consider whether there is a hate crime element to the communication, when assessing impact on  victim
Clarification of the wording of the public interest factors to be considered for prosecution under S.1 Malicious Communications 1988 or S.127 Communications Act 2003" 'via Blog this'

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'

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'