Features

The Supreme Court is getting sporty in the run-up to the Olympics with a unique exhibition charting the history of the Games and the law. The exhibition, “Playing by the Rules”, will include memorabilia from the 1908 and 1948 London Olympics as well as interactive displays, panels and interesting artefacts.  

Ethics, anti-doping, branding, commercialisation and the role of the Court of Arbitration for Sport are all issues tackled by the free exhibition, which is open to the public from July, a week before the Olympics begin, until the end of September. 

Job title
Silk, 20 Essex Street

20 Essex Street is a long-established set of commercial barristers’ chambers with offices in London and Singapore. Members advise on all aspects of international trade, commerce and finance with specialist expertise in banking, shipping, insurance, insolvency, IT, competition, public international law, and European Community law.

As principal legal adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from May 2006 to May 2011, how did you approach the role?

Legal professional privilege

The continued use of state powers to erode legal professional privilege must be stopped, as Nicholas Griffin QC and Gordon Nardell QC explain 

The state has the power secretly to listen in to the meetings you hold with your clients in chambers, at a solicitors’ firm or elsewhere. This surprising situation – and the troubling cases that have brought it to light – have led the Bar Council’s Law Reform Committee to consider state powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and have prompted the Bar Council to campaign for a change to the law. 

A look at the battle tactics and power struggles that have governed the reigns of Heads of Chambers since the beginning of time...

March 11, 2012: “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
 
March is the season of our Annual General Meeting. In times gone by this was a rather jolly affair in which we took rooms at leading London hotels and had a good old natter, followed by a decent lunch. There has, however, been a tendency to slum it in recent times. We have started hiring conference rooms with decidedly inferior cuisine or pokey little rooms in the Inns. However, the siting of this year’s meeting at a church hall in Hackney represented a new phase in our existence.

Having spent eighteen months examining the family justice system, the Family Justice Review, chaired by David Norgrove, reported their findings in November 2011. Stephen Cobb QC, Chairman of the Family Law Bar Association 2010-2011, studies the Government’s response. 

The creation of a Unified Family Court, a new Family Justice Board, together with significant changes to family law legislation, supporting regulations, and practice/procedure in the family courts, particularly in the field of public law, are all signposted by the Government’s response to the final report, issued last November, of the Family Justice Review (FJR). These obvious changes to the family law landscape are expected to be eased along by what may and indeed will need to be a cultural change to the delivery of family justice. 

Job title
Barrister, 7 Bedford Row

7 Bedford Row is a leading national and international set, providing expertise in family law, clinical and professional negligence, personal injury, crime, insurance disputes, employment, fraud, contract and tort, sports law, and regulatory and white collar crime.

Your practice has developed beyond “conventional” crime and regulatory to include professional disciplinary work, and you have recently been award the Bar Pro Bono Award for your work on the Bar Standards Board. How has this come about, and why is the BSB work pro bono?

My practice has always involved an element of disciplinary work, and I have represented a number of legal, medical, financial and sports professionals before the disciplinary committees of various regulatory bodies.  

Benjamin Greenstone questions whether the criminal courts are keeping up with new social media 

While working part time in a Crown Court as a logger and also while Marshalling, I have seen a number of applications to adduce evidence of bad character based on evidence gleaned from social networking sites. This most commonly takes the form of information about who the witnesses and/or defendants are “friends” with on Facebook and who they “follow” on Twitter. 

As protestors from outside St Paul’s Cathedral are evicted, John Cooper QC, counsel for “Occupy”, considers the law surrounding the case 

The legal importance of the judgment in The Mayor, Commonality and Citizens of the City of London v Tammy Samede and Others, should not be underestimated.  In the context of the international ‘Occupy’ movement, it  ‘lit the blue touch paper’ in what is going to be an ongoing development of the law of public protest and how it is reacting to new forms of demonstration. On 13 February 2012, the case continued in the Court of Appeal, before the Master of the Rolls, as Occupy argued that the decision at first instance granted disproportionate relief to the City and failed to take appropriate regard to the appellants’ Article 10 freedom of speech and Article 11 freedom of association rights (under the ECHR). 

“Advocacy, past, present and future – Constant values for a modern Bar” is the theme for this year’s ICAB conference, to be held in London in June. Desmond Browne QC offers a glimpse of what is in store.  

Every two years the International Council of Advocates and Barristers (“ICAB”) organises a conference in a different city around the globe. ICAB, currently co-chaired by Stephen Hockman QC and Noelle McGrenara QC of Belfast, is an organisation formed by the Bar Associations in those jurisdictions where there is an independent Referral Bar. Past conferences have been held in places as far apart as Edinburgh and Cape Town, and as Dublin and Hong Kong. The memorable fifth World Bar Conference was held in Sydney over Easter 2010. Little did I think, as I swallowed white wine and oysters at the opening reception on the terrace of the Opera House, that the next conference would be in London and I would end up holding the short straw of being the programme’s organiser. 

The importance of recognising young people with speech, language and communication needs is increasingly being accepted and understood by the Youth Justice workforce. Anita Kerwin-Nye explains the benefits for all of raising awareness of this hidden disability 

A court appearance can be a complex and bewildering experience for anyone. But for a young person with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) the process can be a minefield of jargon, misunderstanding and confusion. Research shows that over 60% of young people in the youth justice system have SLCN (Bryan, K 2008). This means they have difficulty communicating with others, a skill most of us take for granted; being able to say what you want and to understand what others are saying are the most important skills we need in life. However, young people with SLCN find it hard to articulate what they want to say, might have difficulty understanding what is being said to them or simply don’t understand social rules such as how to take turns in a conversation or to respond to what the other person has just said. Crucially, they may not be able to communicate effectively at a police interview or a court appearance, which could have profound implications. Indeed as the The Audit Commission Report, A Review of the Reformed Youth Justice, states “If a young person is inarticulate, inhibited or lacks understanding...this may lead to misunderstandings and even the passing of an inappropriate sentence.”