The Defence Brief

Men of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1915 The UK government recently launched airstrikes against targets in Syria alongside the US and France. The result was a lot of criticism from people in the UK arguing that the use of force is unlawful because it either breaches international law or because the UK Parliament was not consulted. Lots of this furore seems to be stoked by Russia who are already upset at having been accused of poisoning one of their former spies in Salisbury recently and who have responded with an upsurge in propaganda aimed at the West in general and the UK in particular, including bizarre claims that the UK staged the chemical attack that triggered the air strikes . So, what is the law on committing British forces to military action? I’m going to gloss over international law for two reasons. First, I don’t really understand it and do not feel qualified to comment on it. Secondly, I’m not entirely convinced it exists. Sure, there are rules but ...

Royal Courts of Justice There’s been an argument between police officers and lawyers over the past couple of days on Twitter over whether an acquittal means somebody is actually innocent versus whether a conviction means somebody is actually guilty. In law the position is quite clear, if you are convicted you are guilty; if you are acquitted you are innocent (you may already be shouting at me that “not guilty” does not equate to innocent but you are wrong – everybody is presumed innocent until convicted. If you are not convicted, then you are innocent in law thus a finding of not guilty maintains a defendant’s innocence and you can properly say that a person found not guilty is innocent). One of the more interesting points raised in the police v lawyer debate is that a person can be acquitted in a criminal court but convicted in a civil court. I think it’s an argument that is strong on its face but when looked at in more detail is quite weak. So, it’s worth exploring in a...

Magna Carta None.

Legal research can be dull but the main facts are right there on the net for journos to see The Daily Fail Heil er I mean Mail today reports on two awful Albanians who tricked the Supreme Court into letting them stay in the UK despite their having lied to the wonderful, faultless British Government by claiming they were from Kosovo. They report that “Dinjan Hysaj and Agron Bakijasi pretended to be victims of ethnic cleansing when they came to the UK in the 1990s, but were ordered to leave the country when their lies were exposed.” Lawyers for the pair wracked up bills of “£1million in legal aid” (yeah right – in fact the Supreme Court ordered a detailed assessment of costs and no figure was quoted in the case but in any event a cool mil sounds unlikely to me) fighting deportation by arguing that lying about nationality was not enough to remove British citizenship… oh did we forget to mention that they are British citizens and the case is really about whether they should be...

Penguins know how to queue Ask a foreigner to describe Britain and the British and you’ll no doubt get a list that includes cold weather, rain, stiff upper lips, tea drinking and queuing. Most of these are myths and stereotypes but some have substance to them. Paragraph 26 of Schedule 11 to the Greater London Authority Act 1999 allows Transport for London to make byelaws governing all kinds of conduct on the railways under TfL’s control. This is standard stuff, railways across the country have these powers. They can, and do, create rules and laws including criminal offences that apply only to their railways. TfL’s byelaws regulate conduct such as banning smoking and open containers of alcohol as well as potentially dangerous substances, including acid that could be used in an attack. Perhaps more surprisingly byelaw 1 regulates queuing. “1. Queuing (1) The Operator or an authorised person may require any person to queue in order to regulate order or safety on or ...

Sir Terence Etherton, Master of the Rolls If you don’t know, the Master of the Rolls is a senior judge, in fact it is the second most senior judge in England and Wales. Before becoming Master of the Rolls any office holder will have had a career as either a barrister or solicitor (though let’s be honest there’s not been a solicitor appointed to the role so far but the office has only existed since the 2 nd September 1286 so there’s not been much time to appoint a non-barrister I suppose). The current incumbent is Sir Terence Etherton who has completed almost two months in post and is already proposing the sort of dotty ideas that are best left to politicians. There seems little doubt that the British justice system is, to use a technical legal term that you may not all understand, fucked. There has been years of under investment by successive governments in every possible area from the buildings through the judges and down to the lawyers that appear before them. The buil...

Lady and Lord Howard At Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court on the 1 st December 2016, Lord Howard was convicted of failing to identify the driver of a car belonging to him, which was seen speeding. Lord Howard is a Queens Counsel and former leader of the Conservative Party. He served as Home Secretary under John Major and frequently clashed with judges. One decision made by Lord Howard to set a minimum 15-year tariff to the life sentence imposed on the 10-year-old killers of James Bulger was described by a retired senior appeal judge, Lord Donaldson, as “institutionalised vengeance by a politician playing to the gallery”. The former party leader’s car was seen travelling at 37mph on a road with a 30mph speed limit. A section 172 notice was sent to his home, presumably with a notice of intended prosecution, and Lord Howard replied saying he could not recall who was driving. He identified the other person who might have been behind the wheel simply as “my wife”. The law Secti...

Kragero Golf Resort This post is part of a short series of blogs inspired by the conviction of Halfords Finance Director, Jonny Mason, for drink driving in Norway. In the last post , we looked at whether the golf buggy he was driving at the time of his arrest could be a motor vehicle here in the UK. In this post, we’ll consider how our law differs from Norway’s on the place of the offence. Mr Mason was staying in a golf resort. According to the press, he decided to drive a golf buggy from a bar to his holiday apartment. It is said that at no time did he travel beyond 10KPH or 6MPH. In the UK, drink driving is only a crime when committed in a public place or on a road, but the legal definition of a road is much narrower than you might imagine. If you drink drive in a private place or on a road that does not meet the legal definition of a road then you will be not guilty, so it’s important that you (and your solicitor) knows the difference. To decide whether Mr Mason...

Lord Chancellor Elizabeth Truss MP A couple of days ago the Times reported that former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said that our current Lord Chancellor, Liz Truss, may have broken the law by failing to defend judges following personal criticism of them by national newspapers, one of which described them as “Enemies of the People”. Obviously, I usually defer to his Lordship’s better knowledge in all matters legal but in this instance, I am not convinced he is correct. What is the law? The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 sets out who can be Lord Chancellor and the functions they must perform in the role. We’ll skim over the debatable question of whether Liz Truss, a junior politician with no experience of the justice system beyond a 17 month stint on the Justice Committee and no legal training, is actually qualified to hold the post and move swiftly on to the role of the Lord Chancellor. Section 3 of the CRA 2005 is concerned with guaranteeing the independence of th...

A justice system Kafka would recognise When I read The Trial by Kafka and Nineteen Eighty-Four by Orwell, I took them as warnings of how a bad justice system wrecks lives of those caught up in it. Sadly, some Members of Parliament and the House of Lords seem to view the books more as a guide to how they would like our Criminal Justice System to run. Today, I read of plans to hide the names of accusers and witnesses from defendants in a large number of cases. Victims of sexual offences, such as rape, have had the right to lifelong anonymity for many years now. This means that it is a criminal offence to publish information that will lead to a complainant being identified. A Bill currently being considered by Parliament would extend that anonymity to bar defendants and their lawyers knowing the name of the person accusing them. This would apply not only in sexual offences, as has been reported in the press, but also in violent offences. The anonymity currently offered to ...