Human Rights
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First parliamentary debate on independence referendum legislation
In March this year, Charles blogged about the introduction to the Scottish Parliament of the ‘paving’ Bill to make provision on the franchise for next year’s independence referendum. Tuesday marked the first Parliamentary debate on the Franchise Bill. The general principles of th...A Case of Firsts – Supreme Court strikes down Scottish Parliament legislation
The Supreme Court has, for the first time, struck down part of an Act of the Scottish Parliament as outside the Parliament’s legislative competence. Salvesen v Riddell concerned section 72 of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003, which allowed a tenant in an agricultural tenancy to secure...The BBC, reporting and the court’s power to grant anonymity
Courts often make orders forbidding the publication of information relating to parties in court and the media sometimes challenge those orders. Such a challenge was made successfully by the BBC in the case of SRC on behalf of NSEC v Ewan Kemp. Here, the court action in question involved medical ...Adjudication and Human Rights
Kirsty posted recently* on a decision in which the Court of Appeal clarified the law on Article 1 of the First Protocol (“A1P1″) to the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR″). As Kirsty noted, that case was a rare example of a court finding in favour of a commercial organisatio...An independent Scotland would have a written constitution, says First Minister
First Minister Alex Salmond used his speech to the Foreign Press Association in London last week to announce his personal commitment to a written constitution for an independent Scotland. The First Minister said that an SNP government would “make it one of the first duties of the parliament ...Fine words butter no parsnips – media access to court documents
Back in February I blogged about the BBC’s success in gaining access to productions in a criminal trial in Scotland. As I mentioned in my blog, the position is different in England and Wales because a CPS protocol says that prosecution material which has been relied upon by the Crown in court sh...BBC prevail in Supreme Court FOI case
This week the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed an appeal from the Court of Appeal in the case of Sugar v BBC. The Appellant in the case Mr Sugar, (now deceased and represented by his widow Fiona Paveley) had waged a 6 year battle to secure access to an internal BBC briefing document produced ...THE CARLOWAY REVIEW REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS – A FAIRER SCOTTISH CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM?
On Thursday 17 November I attended the launch of the report from the year long review into Scottish criminal procedure carried out by Lord Carloway. The review followed the Supreme Court decision of Cadder (see an earlier Brodies blog post on the case). The terms of reference required Lord Carlowa...The PVG Scheme round-up
Jackie and I have now completed our tour of the country speaking about the PVG Scheme. With that in mind, now seems an appropriate time to round-up the concerns raised by our delegates in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. By way of re-cap I set out a number of issues in my previous post which yo...Competition law investigations must be ECHR compatible
A recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights considered the important question of the compatibility of competition law enforcement regimes with the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights and will need to be analysed closely to determine its implications for the EU enfo...Scottish supremacy
Much has been said and written recently about the Supreme Court’s involvement in Scottish criminal cases. The Scottish Human Rights Commission has now added its voice to the debate by issuing an open letter to MSPs. In addition, the expert Review Group set up by the Scottish Government ha...All human rights are equal, but some more equal than others
Not being one to sit on the sidelines, I thought I might as well fling myself into the team’s internecine conflict by linking to the comments of Lord Wakeham (former chairman of the Press Complaints Commission), published in a letter to the Telegraph. He complains that the courts have gone t...