All kinds of sensory experiences can affect thinking and impair judgement. Drinking, obviously; the inhalation of cannabis; and perhaps even the sight of a new Home Office […]

A fair amount’s been written about the problems ministers face as they aim to “scrap” the Human Rights Act (to use […]

Today the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee published a report following its short inquiry into police bail. As part of that report the committee recommended that, just as those who say they’ve been the victim of a sexual […]

There’s understandably been a great deal of reaction to the nine-hour detention at Heathrow airport of David Miranda, who was travelling as part of his work with Guardian journalists covering Edward Snowden’s disclosures, and whose laptop and memory stick […]

The government has said it will support Lord Sharkey’s bill aimed at giving a posthumous statutory pardon to Alan Turing for an offence under section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment […]

In Monday’s Lords debate about the new press regulation provisions inserted into the Crime and Courts Bill, one line stands out above all. Discussing an amendment about the vicarious liability of publishers, justice minister Lord McNally said (column 876):

the […]

An exchange in last night’s Lords debate on the new press regulation clauses in the Crime and Courts Bill revealed a little-noticed – and no doubt to some, astonishing – aspect of the proposed system: it covers foreign publishers.

Lord […]

Just before Lord Justice Leveson reported in November, I wrote in support of statutory press regulation:

Only legislation can require newspapers to submit even to their own enforcement of their own code …

What statute – and no other arrangement – […]

Here is the government’s draft bill offering Parliament a menu of options on prisoners’ votes.

Walter Bagehot, in his high Victorian classic The English Constitution, wrote that

the danger of the House of Lords certainly is, that it may never be reformed.

Already the view’s been expressed that if you have a problem with the […]