March 2011

Orwell Prize longlist

March 31, 2011

I’m surprised and (obviously) delighted to have been longlisted for this year’s Orwell Prize for blogging. You can see the full longlist here, and click through to each of the ten submitted posts by the longlisted bloggers. Here are mine, half of which are from Head of Legal, and half from other sites I wrote [...]

Read the full piece →

ZAM v CFW & TFW: “suing for libel in secret”

March 30, 2011

David Leigh has written in the Guardian today about a “superinjunction” granted in a libel case, preventing publication not only of allegations made about about the claimant, known as ZAM, but of his identity. He’s also tweeted about it, suggesting the courts have gone “censorship mad”. Fair enough: this is a story worth reporting, and [...]

Read the full piece →

John Hemming MP: is the detail “a little bit more complex”?

March 28, 2011

Following my post last week about John Hemming MP, and the interesting exchange with him in comments over the last few days, I’m interested to see that on his own blog he’s posted videos of his speech to a meeting of the Freedom Association last Monday about his claims that courts are preventing people from [...]

Read the full piece →

John Hemming MP: abuse of power, and privilege

March 23, 2011

Last week John Hemming MP secured a debate in Westminster Hall about the role of Parliament in dealing with all grievances and the importance of freedom of communication between constituents and Members. Here’s the debate in Hansard, and here’s the video of the debate. He raised a number of very serious issues: the main issue [...]

Read the full piece →

Government note on the legal basis for deployment in Libya

March 21, 2011

The government has today published a note (hat tip to Paul Waugh) setting out a summary of the legal basis of the government’s deployment in Libya. Actually it does no more than explain that UN Resolution 1973 authorises member states to take all necessary measures to enforce a no-fly zone and to protect civilians in [...]

Read the full piece →

Without Prejudice

March 11, 2011

In our second Without Prejudice law podcast, Charon QC chairs as David Allen Green, our guest Catrin Griffiths – editor of The Lawyer – and I discuss the recent ECJ ruling on sex discrimination and insurance premiums, sexism and discrimination in law including the “glass ceiling” for women (is there one?), contempt of court and [...]

Read the full piece →