In the closing days of the session that has just ended, the Government were defeated twice in the House of Lords on an amendment to the Equality Act, inserted into the Enterprise Bill, to make caste a legally protected characteristic. Ministers then gave in, so that after years of campaigning by organisations representing the…
I am writing this from Abu Dhabi. I came here last Saturday and am returning tomorrow night. My purpose was to establish a post graduate school of law with outreach to Palestine in order to advance the rule of law in the region. Zayed University http://www.zu.ac.ae/main/en/ is going to host it as a Masters degree and…
Further to my post below, there was a statement in the Lords yesterday (or an urgent PQ repeated from the Commons to be precise). http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/110523-0002.htm#11052325000213 A joint committee made up of six members of the Commons and six from the Lords is to look into the state of the law following the recent publicity. A number of…
I think I am going to do some hard thinking about the growing problems relating to privacy. In the past I have resisted a law on privacy because of the way it limits investigative journalism but that is less likely now that we have the counter balance of freedom of speech enshrined in the European Convention. The…
In 2007 Parliament passed the Legal Services Act, which might – or might not – revolutionise the way lawyers work, especially barristers. The law allows for, but does not insist on, barristers being able to enter partnership with solicitors, or with each other, instead of carrying on in the time honoured fashion as self employed. I chair…
