Features

One in six people experience some form of hearing loss but are not always easy to identify. Sukhveer Kandola and Narita Bahra explain what barristers can do to secure a fair trial for clients with hearing difficulties.  

Imagine this. You are being cross-examined. You stand silently in the box, surrounded by smart people in wigs and gowns. The room is large, the ceiling is high and there is limited, if any, sound amplification. There is a constant murmur of voices in the background and an intermittent clicking sound. You stare ahead and you concentrate. You really concentrate, but it is not enough and you don’t quite catch the entire question. You ask for the question to be repeated, but you miss it again. You continue to look into the abyss because if you focus long enough, you will work out what is being asked. All eyes are on you and this is your moment to answer. Do you embarrass yourself by asking for the question to be repeated again? Or do you save face and guess what the question was and answer as best you can? You decide on the latter and you continue guessing until you are told you are no longer required and can go back and take a seat in the dock. Should you have said that you have problems with your hearing? You worry whether this will impact the outcome and whether you should say something to your counsel now. But surely he would have already noticed? So you sit down and hope it will all turn out okay. 

Mark Solon finds rumblings of Jackson discontent one year on – around fees, timetables, the amount of work and access to justice.  

Lord Justice Jackson’s reforms to the Civil Procedure Rules were introduced in April 2013. Their aim was to streamline civil litigation, increase access to justice, cut costs, speed up the process and focus on key issues at the outset of any matter. Minds were concentrated by Mitchell v News Group Newspapers Ltd last November, when the Court of Appeal restricted the solicitors’ costs budget of more than £500,000 to court fees of £2,000 because the firm was late filing its budget (see Counsel March 2014 p 21). In other cases, “disproportionate and unreasonable” budgets were not approved, a direct result of the Jackson reforms. 

The recent “Victims’ Law” proposals by Sir Keir Starmer QC throw up the suggestion of judge as inquisitor and challenge our adversarial system. Professor Penny Cooper enters the debate and questions whether judges could or should cross-examine vulnerable witnesses.The recent “Victims’ Law” proposals by Sir Keir Starmer QC throw up the suggestion of judge as inquisitor and challenge our adversarial system. Professor Penny Cooper enters the debate and questions whether judges could or should cross-examine vulnerable witnesses.  

Writing under the heading ‘A Voice for Victims of Crime’, the former DPP Sir Keir Starmer QC is rightly concerned about matters which discourage victims from coming forward to report crimes and from subjecting themselves to cross-examination. He chairs a Labour Party Task Force (established in December 2013) which is to come up with proposals for a new ‘Victims’ Law’. He has suggested that a better way forward might be for judges rather than advocates to challenge the accounts of vulnerable witnesses... 

Dexter Dias QC on the first Female Genital Mutilation prosecutions.  

And so it begins. In April we finally witnessed something that activists who have been campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) for years began to doubt would ever happen: the first defendants in a UK court facing criminal prosecution. The controversy around FGM, the mutilation of the genitals of young women and girls for non-medical reasons, has attained an unprecedented public prominence. There is an ongoing Parliamentary Inquiry. Eminent politicians profess profound concern. National newspapers launch petitions; television stations air documentaries. Yet for all the exposure, two simple stories ram home the brutal reality of FGM. 

Max Hardy on the Anglo-Dutch Exchange in London this Autumn and the need for barristers with spare rooms to act as hosts.  

Tuesday 28 October to Saturday 1 November 2014 sees the Anglo-Dutch Exchange (ADE) taking place in London. This biennial event alternates between The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. 30 young lawyers from the Young Bars of Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam will be coming to London to see, hear and learn about the English justice system. The Exchange is being organised jointly by the Young Barristers’ Committee, the Junior Lawyers’ Division and the London Young Lawyers Group. It has one of the longest and most distinguished pedigrees of any legal exchange having been instituted in 1966. 

It has always been my belief that victory is harder to manage than defeat. When human minds are focused on crisis, it may bring out the best outcome possible. Victory, however, is another story. Doubts enter minds. Factions arise. ‘What if?’ becomes the dominant question. The reason is simple: defeat is rarely total or permanent, hence the desire to rescue and reverse; and victory is neither complete nor forever, which ushers in the worries. These truisms were uppermost in my mind when I attended my college gaudy last week.  

Gaudies are held around every five years as a grand reunion party. Few people go to the early ones, because it is time to escape university and get on with life. A much larger group go to those held in their middle years: a combination of growing nostalgia and perhaps a wish to show friends and contemporaries the fruits of success. 

The review of independent criminal advocacy in England and Wales by former  Permanent Under Secretary Sir Bill Jeffrey and published on 7 May acknowledges the  current concerns of the criminal Bar and recognises its strengths as “a substantial  national asset”, but has put forward a  series of proposals which are unlikely to  find favour amongst barristers.  

In preparing his report he took soundings from representatives on both sides of the profession and the judiciary and consulted statistical evidence. He concluded that “there are many more criminal advocates than there is work for  them to do”. Barristers undergo vastly more initial mandatory training in advocacy than do solicitors but find themselves with “a diminishing share of the work, and are beaten neither on price [there is no price competition in publicly funded criminal work, he noted elsewhere] nor on quality”. 

Illari Aragón examines threats to universal jurisdiction within Spain and the effect upon the Tibet case against China in the Spanish National Court.  

For decades, the Spanish judiciary has been at the vanguard of the use of universal jurisdiction. Since being adopted in 1985, universal jurisdiction has allowed judges to reach across borders and investigate and prosecute human rights atrocities committed around the world. The conviction of an Argentine naval officer for crimes against humanity during the country’s ‘dirty war’ (1976-1983); the prosecution of El Salvador officials for the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989; and most notably, the detention in London of Chile’s former head of state Augusto Pinochet in 1998 for human rights atrocities, demonstrate the Spanish judiciary’s proactive role in bringing cases under universal jurisdiction. 

Michael Zander reflects on his insider’s view of Tony Benn’s battle to renounce his peerage and remain in the House of Commons.  

Fifty-three years ago I was legal adviser to Anthony Wedgwood Benn (as he was then known), in his battle to remain in the House of Commons. At the time I was an articled clerk with Ashurst Morris Crisp & Co. I had met the Benns and was invited to dinner at their house in November 1960, shortly after his father, Lord Stansgate died. He told us how he planned to go about it. I got interested. One thing led to another. 

David Wurtzel reviews a fundraising performance of case excerpts, both real and fictional.  

Court 1 at the Central Criminal Court, which has seen enough drama in its time, was the suitable venue for ‘Trial and Error’, an evening of excerpts about cases both real and fictional which had taken place at the Old Bailey, some even in the very courtroom. It was devised by HH Judge Peter Rook QC and further scripted and directed by Anthony Arlidge QC, who also provided the narration as the ‘court clerk’. The two performances on 3 and 4 March were staged in aid of the Sheriffs’ and Recorder’s Fund which assists former offenders. Over £17,000 was raised.