Charlie Hebdo trial
The
Muhammad cartoons: French magazine prosecuted
The French satirical magazine Charlie-Hebdo is, I read today in Le Monde, on trial in the Tribunal Correctionel in Paris (which is like an informal version of our Crown Court; or else a turbo-charged Magistrates’ Court, whichever way you want to look at it). The charge is “publicly insulting a group on religious grounds”, based on the magazine’s publication of the notorious “Danish cartoons” showing the prophet Muhammad. It’s a private prosecution brought by Paris Central Mosque, the Union of French Islamic Organisations and the World Islamique League.
I have to say I think the prosecution is an absolute http://www.gooakley.com/ scandal, and in my view probably breaches the Article 10 right to freedom of expression.
I notice that Nicolas Sarkozy has written to the magazine expressing his support – an interesting political move given he’s campaigning to be President of France.
Of course in this country, if the Attorney General objected to a prosecution like this, he could take it over and discontinue it. Which is a good example of why it’s actually right to have someone entitled to make political judgments in overall charge of public prosecutions. If the French National Assembly is outaged by this case (as it ****** well ought to be), who will it summon and give a roasting to?
Goldsmith defends his role
The Attorney General has been defending his role in front of the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee this afternoon – I expect him to do so aggressively and firmly. And in the main, I’ll agree with him.
Some people have been saying recently that the government should get its legal advice from someone who is “independent”. Well, that sounds fine, except that government already gets reams and reams of legal advice from independent lawyers. In a sense the whole point of having an Attorney General at all is that he or she isn’t independent in the strict sense – however independent-minded he or she is, which of course is a good thing.
The point of the Attorney is a minister is so that he or she can speak on equal terms with other ministers, shares their political commitment, can be trusted by them and shares in collective responsibility with them. So one reason for having him is precisely the same reason why a company’s Head of Legal* has a place on the board (in this sense I think the role should be beefed up – the Attorney should be a full member of the Cabinet, not simply attend). You’d be silly, wouldn’t you, to suggest that no PLC should have a lawyer-director, and that they should simply rely on barristers in chambers. That’d be crazy. And it’s much, much better for the person undertaking this role of in-house Head of Legal to be a visible, identifiable presence rather than some unknown special adviser – which is where the Prime Minister would turn for his own legal advice if the Attorney were abolished. Another reason is so that major legal decisions can be taken at ministerial level by someone who’s accountable to Parliame – unlike any independent lawyer or office-holder.
Nor do I agree with Harriet Harman’s line, that the Law Officers’ advice should be published. It reminds me of the quite ludicrous view put forward by Lord Alexander a few years ago, that the advice should not only be public, but should be appealable. Mad, mad, mad. Did he think that meant government policy had to change? Aren’t the courts a sufficiently effective mechanism for giving definitive, binding legal rulings?
Anyway, back to the Harman doctrine: publishing Law Officers’ advice, like publishing any legal advice, would merely have the effect of weakening the government’s position in any challenge to its policies, because the whole world would see where it itself had doubts about the legal risks involved in certain policy choices. It would be placed at a disadvantage as compared with vested interests of all kinds. It’d also give legal advice a more central, decisive role than it deserves in political decision-making. I’m against it.
So overall, I’m in favour of the Attorney. If the role didn’t exist, we might well feel we should invent it; and I think it’d be a mistake for Gordon Brown to abolish the role in a ham-fisted, rushed and botched repeat of the farce over the Lord Chancellor’s post a few years back.
There is a danger that the role is expanding just now, mind, and that the Attorney is getting more involved in criminal justice policy than Attorneys were in the past. I’m not so sure about that.
* I feel at this point readers should stand up and repeat the phrase, in a manner reminiscent of “Crackerjack”.
Lance Corporal Hull’s inquest: the video
15 seconds of fame…
Head of Legal was quoted in that fine and perspicacious periodical
AEG blows its stake on Supercasino
Channel 4 News tonight suggested Anschutz Entertainment Group, who were closely involved in the Dome’s bid, are considering a legal challenge to the Casino Advisory Panel’s decision. Well, good luck to them! Unless they’re http://www.gooakley.com/ aware of some clear procedural impropriety, such as a member of the panel having some interest in any of the bids, I think they have vanishingly small chances in any judicial review. It wouldn’t cost much money by AEG’s standards, but in the interests of regeneration in Greenwich, I think they’d be better putting a hundred grand towards local projects.
The Discomfiture of Rome
So, there was third way of sorts, but only in the sense that catholic adoption agencies have
I have to say I think this whole episode has been a communications disaster for the Catholic church: Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s blackmailing tone, when he effectively http://www.gooakley.com/ threatened to close his adoption agencies if not allowed to discriminate, made sure his flock attracted little sympathy. And now, he’s painted himself into a corner. If the agencies close, Catholics will be perceived as having such a weedy social commitment that they’d rather not help place children at all than treat gay people equally. Abd if they don’t close… the Cardinal will be seen to have cried wolf, and none of his threats will be believed again.
Quite a ludicrous affair.
Scottish Elections: incompatible with Convention rights
Read, here, today’s fascinating and important ruling by the Scottish
Registration Appeals Court
There’s nothing legally new in the http://www.gooakley.com/ judgment: it’s much bigger political news that it is legal news. The ruling follows logically from the Hirst ruling in Strasbourg, in which the ECtHR decided the UK breached the Convention right to free elections by imposing a blanket ban on voting by all prisoners. The UK Government hasn’t yet sorted out what new policy to lay down for prisoners (banning lifers from voting might be okay, for instance). Perhaps the Home Secretary wants to discuss the solution with judges (see my earlier post about Charles Clarke) so the Scottish elections will clearly be in breach. This judgment merely clarifies that.
A key point is that the elections will not be unlawful – at least, not under the Human Rights Act – and no one is under any legal obligation to correct the incompatibility. To think they are unlawful is an error that the press repeatedly fell into over the Belmarsh prisoners case. The Government need not Ray Ban outlet act on a declaration of incompatibility, and this may be the first time it refuses to do so.
I say not unlawful at least under the Human Rights Act because I’m not sure what the position of the Scottish Executive and Parliament will be – they have no power, under the Scotland Act 1998, to act incompatibly with Convention rights, so if either technically has a role in conducting the elections – I doubt they do, but I haven’t checked the legislation – there might be difficulty in going ahead with the elections.
Sexual Orientation Discrimination (Goods, Facilities and Services) Regulations 2007
None of us have seen a draft of these regulations yet, but no doubt a draft exists somewhere on a PC belonging to some lawyer in the Department for Communities and Local Government. One thing’s for sure: the exact wording of the bit about adoption services hasn’t been quite settled yet.
What I think is really really fascinating about the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminister’s intervention, from a legal point of view is that, Occhiali Ray Ban outlet although no doubt civil servants are as we blog trying to think of some compromise, it’s quite difficult to imagine how any kind of compromise could be written in to the regulations. An opt-out would be a complete victory for Rome, of course, and Ruth Kelly; complete coverage of all adoption services, a complete victory for gay activists, the Labour backbenches and most of the cabinet. But is any third way possible?
I can’t really think of one.
Brian Haw’s defence succeeds
Brian Haw was acquitted today of breaching conditions on his anti-war demonstration, imposed under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. You can find a report of the court hearing (written by a strong supporter of Brian Haw) here.
It sounds as though the conditions that were imposed could have been a little more clearly thought through; the courts were always Ray Ban outlet bound to ensure an order like this restricting an individual’s action and possibly leading to criminal liability were in as clear terms as possible. And, given cases like this I think the police were daft, frankly, not to have the conditions imposed by the Commissioner himself.
I don’t doubt the police will come back with clearer conditions, properly imposed, however.
Am I alone, though, in not seeing this as a huge victory for liberty? I can understand why Liberty and others back Brian Haw, but I’m not really sure it is a fundamental right to be able to demonstrate wherever you want, however you want, at all times and continuously. I worry that that sort of obsessiveness gives protest a bad name. And I feel this is all relatively minor, really, compared to real dangers to freedom of expression, like what happened in Birmingham when the play Bezhti was closed by a violent mob with the police looking on.