Guest Post From The White Rabbit: How to become a barrister seventies style… How to become a barrister seventies style…BY The White Rabbit They did indeed do things differently then.
To say I became a barrister by accident overstates things but the haphazard did figure prominently. My degree is in economics – a subject as to which I know nothing and care less if it is possible to care less than nothing – as is evidenced by my financial arrangements or conspicuous lack of them. May the #FF Be With You. Justice for victims of human rights abuses by UK companies overseas. Atos. The recent disorder: bail and sentencing. Controversy: Much controversy has been raised by the sentencing meted out to some of those charged with offences committed during the recent disorder.
Many cases have already been sentenced either in the Magistrates' Court. A lesser number of cases have been dealt with by the Crown Court. (Given the short time between committal to Crown Court and sentence, the latter would be guilty pleas). In the Magistrates' Courts, the majority of the cases have been dealt with by professional District Judges (Magistrates' Courts). The English riots. England has experienced a fourth consecutive night of rioting and looting in its cities, prompted by the shooting by police of Mark Duggan in Tottenham.
New and social media have seen almost blanket coverage of the events, so I have little to add, save to link to some interesting legal coverage of the issues involving policing policy, blaming social media, vigilante justice, journalists’ rights and paying for damage under riot law. One issue which sadly has not arisen from these riots is freedom of speech; it would appear that there has been little sense or motive behind the violence following the initial catalyst. Sign up to free human rights updates by email, Facebook, Twitter or RSS Related posts. Anarchists should be reported, advises Westminster anti-terror police. Eight newspapers pay libel damages to Christopher Jefferies. Chris Jefferies.
Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA Eight national newspapers have made public apologies today to Christopher Jefferies for the libellous allegations made against him following the murder of Joanna Yeates, The titles - The Sun, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record, Daily Mail, Daily Star, The Scotsman and Daily Express - have also agreed to pay him substantial libel damages, thought to total six figures. The solicitor for Mr Jefferies, Louis Charalambous, told Mr Justice Tugendhat in the high court hearing that the newspapers had acknowledged the falsity of the allegations, which were published in more than 40 articles. Ms Yeates, a Bristol architect, was killed in December last year. In subsequent days, into early January, the newspapers ran a series of articles about Mr Jefferies that were inaccurate and defamatory.
Do not jail the troll. Facebook 'is an online equivalent of Speakers’ Corner' in London, seen here in 1933.
Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images The long-rumbling battle to protect online freedom of speech has thrown up some unlikely martyrs. Law and Lawyers. Summary judgment in a “Solicitors from Hell” case. This post originally appeared on Media Lawyer, the indispensable subscription service from the Press Association covering all aspects of media law.
It is reproduced with permission and thanks. A solicitor who was defamed by an anonymous posting on the Solicitors from Hell website won summary judgment and libel damages of £17,500 from Rick Kordowski, the man who set up and runs the site. Courts rarely grant summary judgment in defamation cases, doing so only when a defendant has no defence to the action. Mr Justice Eady, sitting in the High Court on 11 October 2010, also ordered Mr Kordowski to pay costs of £28,000 to solicitor Megan Phillips, of law firm Bhatt Murphy, and issued an injunction banning him from repeating the allegations.
The solicitors from Hell website states on its Home Page: “Name and shame those shady Solicitors. Sex work and the prohibitionists. The British do like to ban things.
It is one of our national vices. And the things we often like to ban are what other people get up to. We tend to believe that our moral disgust or ideological certainty about what other people do converts easily into legal prohibitions. To ban something, we seem to assume, is to eliminate it. Writing out a new page in a statute book is seen as somehow having the same effect as casting a spell: if we use just the right form of words, and are sufficiently solemn in doing so, we believe we can change reality.
Twitter joke trial. Metgate. ACS:Law, porn and Scientology: No comment - Commons Law. Subscribe to this blog About Author Andrew Katz is partner and head of the IT/IP team at Moorcrofts LLP, a boutique law firm based in the Thames Valley providing corporate and commercial advice to knowledge-based industries.
Zombies are street legal in Minneapolis : Pharyngula. A few years ago, a group of people dressed up as zombies for a protest march and got arrested for it.
When arrested at the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and 6th Street N., most of them had thick white powder and fake blood on their faces and dark makeup around their eyes. They were walking in a stiff, lurching fashion and carrying four bags of sound equipment to amplify music from an iPod when they were arrested by police who said they were carrying equipment that simulated “weapons of mass destruction.” You be the Judge - A guide to sentencing. Jack of Kent. Charon QC. Before I get lynched by a herd of over refreshed ranting Libertarians after a night out on Twitter or trolled by shaven headed knuckle draggers who want Ingerland for the Ingerlish – whoever they are – let me preface this fairly serious post with the remark that there is a great deal to be proud of in our heritage, in our country and in our mores – but there is a fair bit we need to think about seriously if we are to be a truly progressive country with a justice system and observance of human rights truly worthy of the name.
Over the last 10 years we have seen an extraordinary erosion in our civil liberties – detention without trial, control orders, cctv, proposals for ID cards, the misuse of RIPA, an increasingly authoritarian stance to regulation of society, a growing intolerance to rights of freedom of speech (libel and privacy law come to mind) and a creeping acceptance that ‘national security’ interests merit such erosion….to list but a few.