Features

This year’s Young Bar Conference was as popular as ever. Alexander Learmonth rounds up the highlights.  

The Young Bar Conference is the highlight of the Young Barristers’ Committee’s  calendar and so it is fantastic that it remains so popular among barristers – and pupils – up to ten years’ Call. Thanks to the support of Circuits, many of which funded delegates’ costs, more than 200 barristers, pupils and Bar Vocational Course students attended the 2009 conference – held on Saturday, 3 October at London’s Hotel Russell – from all corners of the country: Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Cardiff and Bristol. And given sponsorship from commercial sponsors and several Specialist Bar Associations, delegates enjoyed 5 hours of accredited CPD, coffee, lunch and tea – all for £40. 

Nigel Pascoe QC shares his personal highlights from this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. 

Aficionados of Fringe theatre will recognise two useful tips: scour the Traverse programme and see what Guy Masterson has on the stocks. This year he had ten shows under his belt, acting in one and producing and/or directing the others. Austen’s Women was the ideal warm up to what was my fifteenth year in Edinburgh. Rebecca Vaughan, demurely changing in front of her dressing table, gradually progressed to her ball gown, taking a dozen or so characters in her stride. Enchanting stuff and excellent characterisation. Then Masterson himself in a very atmospheric two-handed thriller: The Sociable Plover was remote bird watching with a difference; homicide, to be precise. Unsurprisingly, it has already been a television film. Masterson is always worth watching and his pedantic and scary psychopath did not disappoint, splendidly supported by Ronnie Toms. 

Name: Gerard Hickie
Position: Chief Executive
Chambers: Littleton Chambers 

David Wurtzel provides a guided tour of inside the new building 

However much it cost, the Supreme Court building (formerly the Middlesex Guildhall) provides a splendid home for a new institution. Whether you are public, barristers, staff or the Justices, you can see where the money went. Those who knew it in its criminal court days will be glad that English Heritage insisted on retaining a substantial part of the interior. This includes the art nouveau light fittings, the tiled walls, some panelling and furniture and the paintings and sculpture. The latter have been cleaned and rearranged: the bust of the bon vivant Edward VII no longer greets you as you enter but now watches over the public canteen. 

Under the Circuit Diversity Mentor Scheme senior QCs are the first point of contact for barristers interested in applying for judicial appointments or Silk. Desmond Browne QC explains what is involved.  

The Circuit Diversity Mentor Scheme was launched last year by my predecessor, Tim Dutton QC. The aim was to encourage the widest and most diverse possible range of applicants for the judiciary and Silk and appointment to the Attorney General’s Civil Panels. It was strongly endorsed by the Judicial Appointments Commission (“JAC”) which has amongst its statutory objectives “the need to encourage diversity in the range of persons available for selection for appointment”. 

Debate on the future of the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA 1998”) illustrates a number of contemporary political themes.  

There is convergence – both Labour and the Conservatives invoke the spirit of the Glorious Revolution with arguments for a new Bill of Rights. There is divergence – in essence, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are for the HRA 1998 and the Conservatives against it – though all sides have their mavericks. There is an awful lot of confusion, if not wilful obfuscation. And, underneath the politics, there are, largely unacknowledged, constitutional principles that limit what can practically be done. 

David Wurtzel meets Sue Carr QC, Chairman of the Complaints Committee of the Bar Standards Board, and discovers how the new complaints procedure is working in practice 

Members of the Bar can enjoy many exclusive benefits provided by Member Services, an entirely self-funding department of the Bar Council which helps to offset the cost of representing the Bar through commercial activity. 

Member Services are committed to negotiating tailored goods and services for the Bar, often at preferential prices unavailable to the general public.   Our Service Partners offer high quality services at best-value prices through high standards of customer care. Service Partners are selected on the basis of excellent service, an understanding of the Bar’s needs and a commitment to providing tailored services, often with substantial exclusive discounts. Wherever you see this logo, you can be assured that the organisation has signed up to this commitment. http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/for-the-bar/explore-member-benefits/ 

In the wake of the recent Court of Appeal interlocutory judgment giving the green light for the first trial on indictment by a judge alone, David Wolchover and Anthony Heaton-Armstrong propose some convenient and inexpensive jury tampering countermeasures 

The Northern Ireland judge-only Diplock courts for the trial of cases involving a terrorist dimension linger on, though nowadays with a much reduced throughput. But while the risk of jury intimidation and religious bias may have waned in Ulster the perceived problem of jury tampering—or “nobbling”—had supposedly increased in England and Wales to such an extent that provision was finally enacted in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (“CJA 2003”), s 44 for trials on indictment to be conducted where appropriate without a jury. 

Vivian Robinson QC explains why, after a successful career at the criminal Bar working for both sides of the fence of the Serious Fraud Office, he has joined the organisation as the first General Counsel