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21 July 2016 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7708 / Categories: Opinion
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In contempt

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Chilcot delivered a scathing review of the actions of Tony Blair & his government, but what happens next, asks Jon Robins

“Will Tony Blair end up in the Hague? Will he have to share a cell with Slobodan Milosevic? Do you think his wife might take the case?”, quipped comedian Mark Thomas in January 2003 to the lawyer Phil Shiner. The unlikely pair had just been to Number 10 to hand-deliver a “letter before action” on Tony Blair warning the then prime minister he could be prosecuted for war crimes.

Unstoppable rush to war

At the time I was reporting on a growing transatlantic movement of lawyers trying to halt what seemed to be an unstoppable rush to war. In the US the leading human rights lawyer Michael Ratner had secured the signatures of 100 leading law professors in one day to support his letter to George Bush warning of the legal ramifications of military action.

“To many people in the world this is an unwarranted war,” Ratner told me. The lawyer, who went on to challenge

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Sponsored by
Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers joins as partner

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Group names Shakespeare Martineau partner head of Sheffield office

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Four legal directors promoted to partner across UK offices

NEWS
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NLJ this week: Renters’ Rights revolution begins—brace for tribunal chaos

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

NLJ this week: Civil procedure gets a spring overhaul
Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
NLJ this week: Why GP complaints are going nowhere
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
NLJ this week: Prenups meet a jurisdictional brick wall
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
NLJ this week: Has Rylands v Fletcher come back from the dead?
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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