News

The new Supreme Court could cause unpredictable changes to the constitution, Lord Neuberger has warned. 

The former Law Lord, who is due to return to the Court of Appeal in October to take over as Master of the Rolls, has suggested that the Justices of the Supreme Court will be strengthened and more assertive in their new location. 

The new Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), Paul Mendelle QC, has called for the Government to re-think its approach towards the publicly-funded Bar. 

He is taking over as Chairman of the CBA, which represents over 3,600 criminal barristers and is the largest specialist bar association in England and Wales. Commenting on the year ahead, Mr Mendelle said: 

The government has “gone back on its word and resumed its attack on the criminal Bar” the new Criminal Bar Association (“CBA”) Chairman Paul Mendelle QC has warned. In a letter to The Times, Mendelle, of 25 Bedford Row, accused the government of “spinning the facts” in its proposals to reduce fees for criminal defence work. 

A date for your diary: Chalfen Memorial Lecture, 6 November 2009, 14h00 to 16h00 at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5JP. Jonathan Faull, Director General of the European Commission's JLS Department is the guest speaker, and the event will be chaired by Stephen Walzer, Member of the UK Competition Commission. For further details, see www.biicl.org or Email: eventsregistration@biicl.org, Telephone: 020 7862 5151. 

Freedom of expression is “an important card in the pack” but “not always the ace of trumps”, according to Lady Justice Arden. 

In a speech, Freedom of Expression and the Role of a Supreme Court—Some Issues from Around the World, at a judicial academic conference in the summer, Arden LJ considered the role of Supreme Courts. 

The Bar Council is now accepting applications for the 2009 Legal Reporting Awards. 

The Legal Services Commission, in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service, has recently raised concerns regarding the keeping of records by barristers in publicly-funded work. The BSB therefore wishes to remind barristers of their duty to give proper regard to the guidance in this area given in Section 6 of the Practice Management Guidelines. 

The relevant guidance is as follows: 

The Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association welcome the publication of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee’s report on the Work of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The report, entitled The Crown Prosecution Service: Gatekeeper of the Criminal Justice System, highlights areas for attention which include consistency, the piecemeal way in which its functions are developing and the proportion of cases taken by in-house advocates. 

The report calls for the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions to define the role of the prosecutor in the criminal justice system. That role has evolved incrementally, with no clear framework in which their roles have developed, and as a result it is recommended that the CPS needs to be given direction to ensure that it provides a defined, efficient and effective service. 

The 2009 proposal for a Framework Decision (Procedure reference 2009 0802/CNS) to resolve jurisdictional conflicts in criminal cases, limited in scope to situations where the same person(s) are subject to parallel proceedings in different Member States in respect of the same facts (which might infringe the ne bus in idem principle), looks set to be agreed upon by the EP and the Council in time to allow it to be adopted at the JHA Council meeting on 23 October 2009. 

The Bar’s regulatory body has said it would be “wrong” for it to permit barristers to enter into Alternative Business Structures (“ABS”) without further research. 

Responding to the Legal Services Board’s (“LSB”) discussion paper on developing a regulatory regime for ABS, Wider access, better value, strong protection, the Bar Standards Board (“BSB”) called for more evidence about what sort of market is likely to be created, and its impact on the consumers of legal services.