Opinion

The Daily Mail was keen on Lord Judge’s Judicial Studies Board lecture. It linked his caution on the use of judgments of the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights to David Cameron’s policies to strengthen British sovereignty. Lord Judge himself, though he uttered the usual judicial disclaimers (“political debate is not for a holder of judicial office”), can hardly have been surprised. He dealt with politically touchy matters—the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and that of the European Court of Justice. On the former, he entered the murky waters of the authority to be accorded by the domestic courts to judgments of the Strasbourg court.

A central theme of the Jackson Report is that making costs proportionate to damages under the CPR has not been achieved in practice and that major rule changes are needed.

The Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC) issued “definitive guidelines” in relation to corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences causing death on 9 February 2010. Every court must consider these when sentencing organisations on or after 15 February 2010, irrespective of whether the relevant prosecution was commenced before this date.

If a 584-page report can be distilled into one basic question it is this: who should meet the cost of funding personal injury litigation?

So far the public debate about the legality of the Iraq war has been dominated by a single issue: did the lack of a further UN Security Council resolution make it illegal?

I was infected with the litigation “bug” well over 40 years ago and have watched in fascination from both sides of the Bench as advocacy styles have changed. Yet one skill endures—the art of persuasion.

Much of what has been written on the Jackson report so far suggests that the time for debate is over. This is not correct. The debate is just beginning.

Confusion at the newly created Equality and Human Rights Commission was the last thing that human rights needed.

Recently there has been much publicity about graduates working for nothing, or indeed even paying to work, in the hope of making an impression and getting a paid job) see for example The Mail Online, 4 March 2010 – “The Slave Labour Graduates.”)

With pressure mounting on public spending, legal aid is a likely victim of significant cuts. Politicians blame lawyers for inflating demand and increasingly desperate lawyers make pleas for quality and access to justice that are likely to fall on deaf ears. Something, everybody agrees, needs to be done—but nobody can decide what that something might be.