I was distracted yesterday so was not able to do my usual postcard. First up is an important announcement from the excellent Inner Temple Current Awareness news service…
A recent change of web host has provided us with the opportunity to redesign and re-launch our Current Awareness blog. A temporary redirect is in place so the old URL will still lead you to the blog, but our new address is as follows: www.innertemplelibrary.com Please update your bookmarks and links where appropriate.
It is always a pleasure to read Adam Wagner in The UK Human Rights blog… particularly as he is developing a taste for tabloid ‘stylee’ headlines for his blog posts!
Unelected, underqualified and frankly bonkers
Wagner writes…“A near-hysterical reaction has greeted some recent European court rulings. If you believed the coverage, you would think that unelected, underqualified and frankly bonkers judges are dictating our laws and making our Prime Minister physically ill. With this week potentially heralding another hang-the-judges media storm over Max Mosley’s Strasbourg privacy case, it is a relief to read three sensible and balanced pieces on European courts this week, all of which highlights the courts’ shortcomings, but also the risks of a UK withdrawal.
I join David Allen Green (in my case a cynical rather than ‘skeptical’ eye) in marvelling at the mainstream media hysteria on the possibility that judges and parliamentarians may bring sense to the whole privacy issue. Expect more ‘stories’ about unelected judges when the Mosley judgment is handed down from Europe. This could be most inconvenient for their parallel universe view of ‘rights’ – the right to increase revenue through salacious revelations about people behaving badly. Unfortunately for their cause – it would appear that the revelations about superinjunctions, widely available on the net, seem to be about matters of shagging and other private misbehaviour – rather than more important ‘public interest’ issues.
Twitter has been ablaze with talk of ‘Thousands of people’ possibly committing contempt of court by publishing details of apparent superinjunctions. Jemima Khan denied that she took out a superinjunction – and stated that the fact newspapers published her name (but not others) without fear of being sued, proved her point. She doesn’t have a superinjunction.
Joshua Rozenberg asks if a person unaware of the existence of a superinjunction commits an offence if he / she comes into possession of information, the subject of a superinjunction, and publishes. Kafka’s Trial may well prove to be a useful reference work in that connection? The Guardian reports: “Hugh Tomlinson QC weighed in on Guardian Law via the Inforrm blog with the first of two pieces on how a privacy law might work….”
Unfortunately… I have to go and do something vaguely sensible now… but I’ll be back later. In the meantime… if you missed it and would like to listen to our latest Without Prejudice podcast: Bin Laden assassination – Ian Tomlinson – City Law practice and BRIBERY ….. please scroll down or click here.
Best, as always
Charon
On the Super Injunction piece, my idea was a “reverse Spartacus” where if the celebs who don’t have one all do interviews, in a very short space of time the ones who do will become clear?
Based on people incorrectly naming innocent people and damaging their lives and families.
(It is on my site if you want to see the fuller idea)
And great as always – look forward to yours popping up in my reader.
Simon
Do you have a link for Rozenberg? It’s a question that has been bugging me too.
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