The first time I came across Dominic Grieve, he made a fool of the Labour shadow justice minister, Paul Boateng. It was in the 1990s, at a Liberty conference on human rights. Paul Boateng opened by attacking Grieve and the [...]
This case involved Italy, not Britain - but nonetheless today's judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, about prisoner's rights to vote, represents a small but significant victory for the British government. The Court has [...]
In today's Independent, President of the European Court of Human Rights Sir Nicolas Bratza defends the record of his court, and effectively pleads for more understanding in Britain. The European Court, he says has been particularly respectful of decisions emanating [...]
Today the Times is running a (£) story headlined: Cameron is cleared to defy Europe on human rights The story is based on an eight-page memo prepared for Nick Clegg that Sam Coates has published on Twitter: [blackbirdpie url="[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/38568272400097280"] [...]
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled today that an Italian prisoner's rights were breached where he was sentenced to prison for life, and as a result lost the right to vote indefinitely. The ECtHR's ruling in Scoppola v [...]
Today has seen the failure in the Court of Appeal of the judicial review in Chester v Justice Secretary, a case that always was hopeless. More importantly, the government intends to give the vote to all prisoners serving less than [...]
I'm agnostic about whether prisoners should be allowed to vote - I can see the rehabilitation argument, up to a point, but I understand the view that disfranchisement (as the legislation puts it) is part of punishment, too. So if [...]
I spoke to Charon QC earlier about the issue of prisoners' voting, following Joshua Rozenberg's recent Guardian Law piece on the subject and the guest post on his blog by John Hirst. We give a bit of background about the [...]