Category Archives: Law

Judge Judy: ‘Are my feelings PC and kumbaya? No. They are realistic’

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Her TV show has been No 1 in the US since 1998, but many have criticised her approach to justice. As she hangs up her gavel after 25 years, she discusses wealth, success and repentance

Order, order. Court is in session, Judge Judith Sheindlin presiding, and while you are here you will follow her rules.

Don’t throw paper on the floor. Hang on to your gum wrapper until you get to a bin. Don’t befoul your community. Try not to scratch other people’s cars and, if you do, leave your details on the windscreen. Don’t tell lies. Confront your problems and try to solve them.

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Shamima Begum court decision brings shame on UK | Letters

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Readers respond to the supreme court decision that Begum will not have her citizenship restored

Every day it seems the Guardian serves up another reason for being ashamed to be British. On Friday, it was the case of Shamima Begum (Shamima Begum loses fight to restore UK citizenship after supreme court ruling, 26 February). It makes it particularly difficult that I’m tutoring someone who is hoping to take an A-level in British politics. All the books list human rights and explain how carefully protected they are in our system. Article 5 is supposed to protect the right to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. Yet the supreme court is unable to protect Begum’s rights against a home secretary who is operating a policy based on pandering to public opinion in return for (hoped-for) votes.

We are told that legal protections are particularly important in difficult cases – that is, cases where an individual presents as unpleasant or undeserving. Begum was a teenager who took the extraordinary step of leaving her country to defend something she believed was deserving of her support. But even if she left with the firm intention of terrorising her fellow citizens, does this mean she should be deprived of her rights? It is a matter not of what Begum deserves but of what our national honour, and our constitution, deserve. This has been increasingly in doubt in recent years, with the government threatening to renege over the Northern Irish border agreement; not to mention the Chagos Islands and our participation in rendering citizens to be tortured during the “war on terror”.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter

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More than 50,000 people call for inquiry into use of Queen’s consent

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Tens of thousands sign petition to investigate mechanism that allows Queen to vet draft laws

More than 50,000 people have called for a parliamentary investigation into an “unfathomable” mechanism that allows the Queen to vet draft laws before they are approved by the UK’s elected representatives.

They have signed a petition supporting an urgent investigation by a House of Commons committee as they are concerned that the “royal family has a worrying and undemocratic ability to influence the government behind closed doors”.

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Yazidis have been forgotten during Covid. They need justice, jobs and a return home | Nadia Murad

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Survivors of Islamic State brutality are pushed further into the margins as the pandemic causes the world to turn inward

Staring at the same four walls day after day, unable to find work, reunite with relatives, or send your children to school. The Covid pandemic has rendered this bleak picture a reality for many people across the globe. Yet for many who have survived or are living through conflict, these hardships are hardly novel.

For the Yazidi ethnic minority in Iraq, Islamic State’s 2014 genocide created adversity long before the pandemic ever did. For more than six years, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have been in camps for internally displaced people (IDP) staring at the same four walls of their tents. They are unable to find work because Isis razed their farms and businesses. They cannot reunite with relatives still in Isis captivity or attend the burials of family members whose bodies remain in mass graves.

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UK’s anti-terror chief fears rights group boycott threatens Prevent review

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Neil Basu says move to protest appointment of William Shawcross could harm process

Britain’s best chance of reducing terrorist violence risks being damaged amid a huge backlash to the government’s choice of William Shawcross to lead a review of Prevent, the country’s top counter-terrorism officer has told the Guardian.

Assistant commissioner Neil Basu’s comments came after key human rights and Muslim groups announced a boycott of the official review of Prevent, which aims to stop Britons being radicalised into violent extremism.

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Uber drivers are workers, UK supreme court rules

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Decision means drivers will be entitled to basic rights such as paid holidays, say lawyers

The UK supreme court has dismissed Uber’s appeal against a landmark employment tribunal ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers with access to the minimum wage and paid holidays.

Six justices handed down a unanimous decision backing the October 2016 employment tribunal ruling that could affect millions of workers in the gig economy.

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ECHR tells Russia to free Alexei Navalny on safety grounds

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Russia says it will ignore ruling, which it calls a ‘blatant and gross interference’ in its affairs

The European court of human rights has told Russia to free Alexei Navalny, prompting a new standoff between Europe and Moscow over the fate of Vladimir Putin’s staunchest critic.

Russia has said it will ignore the ruling despite a requirement to comply as a member of the Council of Europe, calling the court’s decision “blatant and gross interference in the judicial affairs of a sovereign state”.

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Dutch court reinstates Covid curfew minutes before its start time

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Earlier ruling that emergency powers were wrongly used is overturned, with full hearing due on Friday

A Dutch appeals court has ruled that the government’s controversial coronavirus curfew must stay in place until a hearing later this week to decide whether the measure is legal.

The government had been stunned when a lower court judge ruled earlier that it must immediately lift the Netherlands’ first curfew since the second world war because it had wrongly used emergency powers to invoke it.

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Key pro-democracy figures go on trial over Hong Kong protests

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Veteran activist Lee Cheuk-yan accuses police and government of depriving Hongkongers of constitutional rights

A veteran champion of democracy in Hong Kong has described its legal system as an instrument of political suppression, after he and eight other high-profile figures went on trial in one of the biggest court cases linked to the protest movement that paralysed the city for more than a year.

“It’s the department of justice, the police department and the Hong Kong government who should be on trial because they have deprived us of our constitutional rights,” said Lee Cheuk-yan after the day’s proceedings. “This year is the year of the ox so we should be stubborn as an ox.”

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British barrister Karim Khan elected ICC’s new chief prosecutor

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Khan, 50, won on second round of voting by 131 member states and replaces Fatou Bensouda, who was hit with US sanctions

A British QC has been elected as the new chief prosecutor for the international criminal court in an election by the court’s 131 member states at the UN in New York. Karim Khan will replace Fatou Bensouda from the Gambia, and as he starts his nine-year term he faces a daunting task trying to secure more convictions and spread acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction across the globe.

The secret ballot for the post was the first in the court’s history – and took place amid some controversy and high politics between member states.

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Nigerians can bring claims against Shell in UK, supreme court rules

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Ogale and Bille villagers say Shell oil operations have caused severe pollution including to their drinking water

Two Nigerian communities can bring their legal claims for a cleanup and for compensation against the oil company Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary in an English court, supreme court judges have said.

In what lawyers said was a “watershed moment” for the accountability of multinational companies, on Friday the court overturned a decision by the court of appeal, and ruled that the cases against Shell could proceed.

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Pakistan ends death penalty for prisoners with severe mental health problems

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Supreme court ruling welcomed by rights activists who say it opens the way to broader prison reforms

In a landmark decision, Pakistan’s supreme court ruled this week that prisoners with serious mental health problems cannot be executed for their crimes.

The verdict was hailed by rights activists, who said it laid the groundwork for broader prison reforms in the country.

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Meghan wins privacy case against Mail on Sunday

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Judge gives summary judgment in favour of royal over extracts of letter to estranged father, Thomas Markle

The Duchess of Sussex has won her high court privacy case against the Mail on Sunday, hailing her victory as a “comprehensive win” over the newspaper’s “illegal and dehumanising practices”.

After a two-year legal battle, a judge granted summary judgment in Meghan’s favour over the newspaper’s publication of extracts of a “personal and private” handwritten letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.

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Saudi Arabia’s release of Loujain al-Hathloul an overture to Biden

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Analysis: Mohammed bin Salman views the move as an attempt to engage the new US administration

As Loujain al-Hathloul marked her first day outside prison in nearly three years, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, was bracing for a reaction from Washington to what amounts to a peace offering on his part.

Prince Mohammed views the decision to release the women’s rights activist as an attempt to belatedly engage the new administration, whose strident tone on human rights issues in its early weeks of office has all but conditioned a working relationship with Riyadh on righting the wrongs of the Trump years.

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Outrage over French girl’s rape case sparks demand for law to protect minors

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Campaigners call for the introduction of an age of consent as 20 firefighters face charges

Protests will take place across France on Sunday in support of a woman allegedly raped by 20 firefighters when she was between 13 and 15 years old. Her case is being examined in the country’s highest court this week and campaigners hope it will lead to an age of sexual consent being enshrined in law as it is in the rest of the European Union.

Julie* says she was raped by Parisian firefighters over a period of two years, having been groomed by Pierre, a firefighter who had assisted her during a severe anxiety seizure when she was 13 in early 2008. Three of the accused have admitted they had sex with her but say it was consensual. In a journal written shortly afterwards Julie says she was “terrified and paralysed with fear” at the time.

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US supreme court sides with Germany in Nazi art dispute

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Court ruled unanimously that Germany had sovereign immunity in US courts from claims over the Guelph collection

The US supreme court rejected a suit on Wednesday by the heirs of Nazi-era Jewish art dealers for compensation from Germany for a storied collection of medieval art treasures.

Related: Nazi art dispute goes to US supreme court in landmark case

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Fears rise that Polish libel trial could threaten future Holocaust research

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Case brought in wake of rightwing government criminalising blame of Polish nation for Nazi crimes could have implications for further research

Two Polish historians are facing a libel trial over a book examining Poles’ behaviour during the second world war, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the future of independent Holocaust research under Poland’s nationalist government.

A verdict is expected in Warsaw’s district court on 9 February in the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian with the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa. While the case is a libel trial, it comes in the wake of a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law caused a major diplomatic spat with Israel.

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New claims of migrant abuse as Ice defies Biden to continue deportations

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Ice condemned as ‘rogue agency’ after rights groups allege torture by agents and man deported to Haiti who had never been there

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been denounced as a “rogue agency” after new allegations of assaults on asylum seekers emerged, and deportations of African and Caribbean migrants continued in defiance of the Biden administration’s orders.

Joe Biden unveiled his immigration agenda on Tuesday, and his homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate, but the continued deportations suggested the Biden White House still does not have full control of Ice, which faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses and allegations that it has disproportionately targeted black migrants.

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Worker at H&M supply factory was killed after months of harassment, claims family

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Fashion brand to investigate the death of 20-year-old Jeyasre Kathiravel, reportedly killed by supervisor at Natchi Apparels

The family of a young garment worker at an H&M supplier factory in Tamil Nadu who was allegedly murdered by her supervisor said she had suffered months of sexual harassment and intimidation on the factory floor in the months before her death, but felt powerless to prevent the abuse from continuing.

H&M said it is launching an independent investigation into the killing of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 20-year-old Dalit garment worker at an H&M supplier Natchi Apparels in Kaithian Kottai, Tamil Nadu, who was found dead on 5 January in farmland near her home.

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Just £12,000 of £40m fund for displaced Chagos islanders has been spent

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MP representing most of UK’s Chagossians says failure to use compensation money to help those facing hardship is outrageous

Less than £12,000 of a £40m fund set up to compensate Chagos islanders who were forcibly evicted from their homeland by the British government has reached those living in the UK.

Four years after it was announced, the Foreign Office fund has distributed less than 1% of its budget in direct support to islanders forced from their homes in the Indian Ocean.

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