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17 July 2015 / Alec Samuels
Issue: 7661 / Categories: Features , Human rights
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Back to the future

Alec Samuels puts the case for the reform of European human rights law

The English legal system served us fairly well before the advent of European human rights. European human rights law has created a vast body of jurisprudence, an extra tier in litigation, and has produced a number of problems and anomalies and even abuses.

National security

Nothing can be more important in national life than public safety and national security. Is it not for the UK Parliament to determine the degree of infringement of personal liberty, eg control orders against suspected terrorists, telephone tapping, retention of criminal records, with the appropriate judicial safeguards?

Deportation

A convicted foreign national was ordered to be deported. Anticipating conviction and deportation he married a UK citizen and pleaded family hardship (Art 8). A criminal conviction often inflicts hardship upon the family, a regrettable consequence.

Sex offender

A foreign national was convicted of sexual offences and ordered to be deported. Because sexual offences were not well regarded in his own state he pleaded threat to life

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The Court of Appeal has slammed the brakes on claimants trying to swap defendants after limitation has expired. In Adcamp LLP v Office Properties and BDB Pitmans v Lee [2026] EWCA Civ 50, it overturned High Court rulings that had allowed substitutions under s 35(6)(b) of the Limitation Act 1980, reports Sarah Crowther of DAC Beachcroft in this week's NLJ

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As AI-generated ‘deepfake’ images proliferate, the law may already have the tools to respond. In NLJ this week, Jon Belcher of Excello Law argues that such images amount to personal data processing under UK GDPR
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