Justice Matters

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. 

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. 

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. 

The prevailing idea that the British courts are losing control to Strasbourg is to view the situation the wrong way around, argues Dean Spielmann, the President of the European Court of Human Rights.  

Hardly a day goes by without some reference in certain sectors of the British press to the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) in less than flattering terms. This criticism is often relayed by leading politicians. Recently some senior judges have also voiced unease about the Court. There is undeniably a problem in the way the work of the Court is currently understood and perceived in the United Kingdom. This is of particular concern to members of the Court and to me, its President, because of the outstanding contribution that the United Kingdom has made to the human rights protection system set up by the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”) and the leading role it has played more generally in the development of human rights standards. I am therefore grateful to Counsel for this opportunity to try to dissipate some of the misconceptions that have arisen. I will seek to address two main criticisms of the Court - firstly that it is undemocratic, and secondly that it has excessively expanded the scope of the protected rights and freedoms. 

Significant changes have occurred in the way vulnerable witnesses are treated by the courts. Eleanor Laws QC considers the recent case of R v F [2013] EWCA Crim 424.  

Helen” is a 24 year-old deaf woman who lives with her parents. She cannot speak and has a limited ability to use sign language as a result of having learning difficulties and suffering from cerebral palsy restricting the use of her right hand. She has a limited number of friends and family and spends much of her time with her parents, either at home or in the local pub. 

Tracy Ayling QC, an Inner Temple Advocacy Trainer, explains the new and necessary way of cross-examining vulnerable witnesses and the training available to advocates to help them to follow the rules.  

It is true that there are some excellent and informative CPD courses at the end of every year. It is possible to collect your points whilst trying to assimilate rafts of cases and notes, delivered to you by experts in the field. How much of it you retain may be open for debate. 

Paul Marshall on Andrew Mitchell MP v News Group Newspapers Ltd and the stripping of judicial discretion.  

  “‘Sit down!’ roars the captain. “Ye sot and swine, do ye know what ye’ve done? Ye’ve murdered the boy!’  

 Mr Shuan seemed to understand; for he sat down again and put his hand to his brow.  

 ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he brought me a dirty pannikin’  

 At that word, the captain and I and Mr Riach all looked at each other for a second with a kind of frightened look….”  

Counsel’s consultant editor, David Wurtzel, pays a tribute to the former Lord Chief Justice and looks back at the contribution he has made to the Bar, the law and the country.  

It was Hugh Davies QC who summarised Lord Judge’s tenure as Lord Chief Justice as “beyond the brilliance and clarity of his judgments and progressive thinking in the vulnerable witness area, it is his appreciation of the changing culture in how trials should work and the respective roles and duties of judges/counsel. Directions to the jury on rape myths; and understanding of modern crime such as cyber and organised sexual offending against children. He is often more progressive in all this than the counsel who claim to be ‘front line’.” 

Slavery and trafficking are now the leading and most profitable international criminal enterprises, outstripping both drugs and fraud. Lewis Power QC and Ross Talbott explore the problem and the steps being taken against these crimes.  

Today’s human rights abusers commonly hide behind entrenched cultural idiosyncrasy. Barbaric acts of stoning, the death penalty and child executions are said to have been carried out under the guise of cultural essentialism. Such arguments are even used to facilitate the rule of undemocratic regimes where parliament is powerless, the rule of law non-existent and corruption rife. With globalisation, the visibility of human rights abuses has increased worldwide due to escalation in cross-border economic, social and cultural activity. It is therefore vital that each and every nation or state claiming to respect the rule of law and human rights acts immediately to combat the colossal problem of contemporary slavery.