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When sorrows come…….
Marc Beaumont considers how the
Bar’s Complaints process might be made more tolerable
"When sorrows come - they come not single
spies - but in battalions." Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius may
have been a psychopathic killer, but he spoke the language of a
wise and just monarch. When accusation is heaped on accusation,
the world can be a lonely and frightening place. And it is no less
so for Barristers.
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Where there is no publicity there is no justice?
By Stephen Cobb
QC, family law specialist
Jeremy
Bentham, the Eighteenth Century jurist, philosopher and social reformer,
believed that “…in the darkness of secrecy, sinister
interest and evil in every shape have full swing. Only in proportion
as publicity has place can any of the checks applicable to judicial
injustice operate. |
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Dangerous Minds
By Thom Dyke, Barrister
The
Court of Appeal in Ferguson v British Gas [2009] EWCA Civ 46 sent
a strong message that it was not prepared to accept any attempt
to escape liability for criminal and tortious acts by hiding behind
what was termed by Sedley LJ as ‘the privilege of incorporation.
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When the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) came into being
in April 2006 I know not everybody was convinced about the need
to set up an independent body to select judges
By Baroness Prashar, Chair, JAC
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord
Judge was kind enough to say this year that in his view the debate
over whether there should be a Commission, and whether judges should
be selected in open competition on merit is for the past not the
future. |
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Strands
of Evidence
By Matt Taylor, Managing Director of ScreenSafe
UK
For many years now, hair testing has
been used as a useful tool within the legal/medico sector to provide
crucial evidence of exposure or use and of substances including
prescription, over the counter and illegal drugs, but are you making
full use of this clever technology?. |
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Change you can believe in: What new rights against associative discrimination
mean for claimants
By Matthew J Smith BA Oxon, PGDL Brookes,
LLM Inns of Court School of Law
The recent European Court of Justice
case of Coleman v Attridge Law demonstrates the potentially radical
changes the Tribunal System can affect in day-to-day life. Sharon
Coleman worked as a legal secretary for a firm of solicitors called
Attridge Law |
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Concerns over future of publicly funded work
By Paul Mendelle QC
The government monitors the state of legal aid by all manner of
indicators, yet it sometimes seems as if the cost of its upkeep
is the only vital sign that matters. The mantra of the day from
government is sustainability, but no-one outside Whitehall (or inside
we often feel) is clear quite what that means |
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Working
with experts at civil trials
By Mark Solon, Solicitor, Bond Solon Training
Judges do not have to accept
expert evidence, even if it is from a single joint expert, or from
an ‘illustrious source’. The function of expert evidence
is to assist the judge, not to usurp the judge’s role. At
a minimum, you should remind inexperienced experts that when they
give evidence they should: a) address the judge (not the counsel
examining them. |
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Comparing
the cost: we must look beyond prison
By Roma
Hooper and Roma Walker, Make Justice Work
A number of countries
are waking up to the fact that prison is an expensive and ineffective
option for low level offenders, and that imprisonment should be
reserved for those who are a serious danger to the public. For example,
new reforms in Norway mean that all prisoners serving less than
four years will start their sentence in an open prison. |
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Call to ban magistrates from sending minor offenders to jail
By Carol Hedderman, Professor of Criminology at the University of
Leicester
Anyone who questions whether we need to be sending quite so many
people to prison risks being labelled soft on crime and being more
concerned with the rights and needs of offenders than the rights
and needs of victims.
The National DNA Database:
crime solving tool or violation of civil liberties?
By Sir
Bob Hepple QC, FBA, Emeritus Master of Clare College and Emeritus
Professor of Law, University of Cambridge.
DNA profiling has had a dramatic
impact on the detection and prosecution of crime. But this rapidly
developing technology has also given rise to many concerns, for
example the indefinite retention of DNA samples from those who are
not charged or are acquitted;the
irrevocability of consent given in fraught circumstances by victims
and witnesses.
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A
new era dawns: Are we awake?
Andrew Butler, Barrister at Tanfield
Chambers, considers the arrival of the Legal Services Act and what
this means for how barristers should market their expertise, and
reviews his chambers’ experience so far in embracing the new
era. The aim is clear: the Act seeks to encourage change in the
legal marketplace, but how, as barristers, will this affect our
profession? . |
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