Third Party Interventions in the UK In recent years, UK courts have begun to allow third party interventions – applications by public bodies, private individuals or companies, or NGOs to make submissions which raise some issue of public importance. The establishment of a Supreme Court for the UK raises a number of questions concerning such […]

Secret evidence is unreliable, unfair, undemocratic, unnecessary and damaging to both national security and the integrity of Britain’s courts. The idea of a fair hearing is as old as western civilization itself. This core principle of British justice has been undermined as the use of secret evidence in UK courts has grown dramatically in the […]

Report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights This report of the International Commission of Jurists’ Eminent Jurists Panel, based on one of the most comprehensive surveys on counter-terrorism and human rights to date, illustrates the extent to which the responses to the events of 11 September 2001 have changed the […]

“This is a problem of real substance, well beyond mere harmless and quaint ceremonial. It is surely a loophole in our constitutional safety net – a way in which hard law can be directly created, affecting fundamental rights, whilst by-passing Parliament and any prior accountability. The very same issue was a matter of controversy between […]

Ten years of the Criminal Cases Review Commission The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has its genesis in a series of catastrophic wrongful convictions in the 1970s. The cases of the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six marked a low point in British justice. The Runciman Commission, set up in response to […]