Features

As the deadline for nominations for the Bar Pro Bono Award 2010 approaches, Georgina Closs asks six previous winners – who have all made an outstanding contribution to pro bono work – what it means to win the Award.  

Each year, the Sydney Elland Goldsmith Pro Bono Award recognises the sets of chambers and members of the Bar who have made an outstanding contribution to pro bono work over the course of the year. With the nominations deadline for the 2010 award approaching fast, I interviewed six previous award winners – Andrew Walker, Michael Fordham QC, Keir Starmer QC DPP, Andrew Hall QC, Samantha Knights and Judith Farbey – to gauge their experiences of pro bono work and what it meant to win the Award. 

Are your chambers’ details being used in connection with online fraud? Caroline Kean and Rachel Barber advise on protecting chambers from uninvited and unauthorised association with bogus websites 

Beer: The Singular Case of Donoghue v Stevenson
Matthew Chapman
Wildy, Simmonds and Hill; Hardback (December 2009); £14.99 ISBN: 0854900497 

“You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law is my neighbour? The answer seems to be – persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called into question” per Lord Atkin. 

1876–2009
Edited by Louis Blom-Cooper, Brice Dickson and Gavin Drewry
Oxford University Press; Hardback (August 2009); £95
ISBN: 0199532710 

The Law Reform Committee wants to know which areas of law reform it should consider on behalf of the Bar, say Dan Stacey and Eleena Misra 

There are lessons for the Bar in this musical, believes David Wurtzel. 

Legally Blonde (Savoy Theatre) proves that good new musicals can still be written. They can also be performed by your favourite television stars who are indeed able to sing, dance and do dialogue (with occasional breathlessness) on stage. The combination is perfect: the women steal the show, the men provide the eye candy and the audience, who greet it with remarkable knowingness, gives it a standing ovation. You do not have to have seen the movie and I suspect that I am glad that I didn’t. It is easier to suspend disbelief in a theatre than in the cinema. Legally Blonde belongs in a theatre. Luckily, the entire cast led by Sheridan Smith with wonderful star quality and timing, plays it straight, though with gays, a lesbian and sexual harassment, straight may not be quite the word. 

Is it possible to challenge extradition requests based on the right to family life following Norris, asks Abigail Bright 

Nobody has yet successfully challenged an extradition request made under a bilateral extradition treaty on the grounds that the extradition would breach the person’s right to respect for private and family life, as guaranteed by art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, within the territory of the respondent state. In Norris v Government of the United States of America (No 2) [2010] UKSC 9 the Supreme Court – unanimously – rejected Ian Norris’ argument that extradition to the USA would be incompatible with his right to a private and family life in the UK. Nevertheless, Norris provides overdue guidance on when such a challenge may succeed.  

Name: Andrew Argyle
Position: CEO
Chambers:  Zenith Chambers 

Later this year anyone who is arrested in Europe will be able to find out about their legal rights – in their own language – online. Amanda Pinto QC discusses what the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe project involves 

The European Commission has decided to provide a pan-European project enabling those who come into contact with the criminal justice system in another member state to find out about their rights in their own language. 

Edited by Chris Miele
Merrell Publishers; Hardback (April 2010); £35
ISBN: 1858945070 

This book is one of the best things to come out of the transformation of the Middlesex Guildhall from a Crown Court into the Supreme Court. Lavishly illustrated with superb photographs, plans and drawings, it is also a wonderful read. There are eight essays from, amongst others, Lady Hale, Lord Bingham, and top notch art and architectural historians. Together they explain the judicial functions of the House of Lords leading to the creation of the Supreme Court, the history of the building and its predecessors on this site, the architecture of the present Guildhall together with its glorious decorative arts and sculpture inside and out, and the iconography of supreme courts in the common law world which over the decades has moved from imperial grandeur to glass box transparency.