Separating Libertarianism and Political Liberty
I wrote an article in the Guardian on Friday arguing that libertarianism and political liberty needed to be kept separate in our minds, and that civil libertarians should be prepared to engage more in...
View ArticleCan Animals Have Human Rights?
The question seems absurd until you realise that it is an ill-conceived way of putting a deeper point that is harder to refute: what makes human beings so special that they – and they alone among the...
View ArticleA Comment on The Visit of President Kagame to The Centre For The Study Of...
The President of Rwanda Paul Kagame is my my first guest at LSE this term. His schedule includes an address to the centre on development, climate change and human rights. There has been some...
View ArticleLuck & The Irish.
If Ireland were ever to spend some of its recently acquired vast fortune on a ‘Museum of National Treasures’, Roy Foster should be asked to open it. This occasionally angry, sometimes whimsical and...
View ArticleShould Ian Blair resign?
I have not liked the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair since one of my students of many years ago – a police officer who received the George Medal for bravery in confronting an IRA gang in...
View ArticleThe economic collapse
The great good fortune is that these events have taken place before not after the US presidential election: had this happened in March 2009, and had Obama won a tight contest he would have been...
View ArticleGAZA
Israel’s attack on Gaza is its consolation prize for not being allowed bomb Iran: like a school bully denied the chance to attack another Form, it has picked on some small kids in the playground so as...
View Articleshould academic lawyers want to be understood by the general public?
There was a dispiriting moment in the Q and A session after Professor William Twining's excellent address to the Society of Legal Scholars last Thursday, on the need to foster the public understanding...
View Articlea new book-as-a-blog
I am launching a new book on the web, on 6 October 2010. The idea is to write regularly about freedom and human rights, inviting comments on the work as I go along. Then when I have all the comments in...
View ArticleStark raving Starkey
I first encountered David Starkey in the late 1980s. We were debating freedom and civil liberties together in a BBC2 programme chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby. It was the first time I had ever been on TV...
View ArticleArticle 14
The Human Rights Act has become for David Cameron what the fox-hunting ban was for Tony Blair: when in a spot of bother with your own support, wheel out something bound to please them. In his article...
View ArticleArticle 13
A TALE OF TWO SPOILT KIDSOn this day ten years ago, 11 September 2001, we were not to know that the perpetrators of the attacks on New York and Washington had played their best card right at the start...
View ArticleWHAT IS REALLY GOING ON AT DALE FARM?
The attempt to remove travellers from Dale Farm in Essex has been the subject of a series of complicated legal actions, some of which are ongoing. Here is a snapshot of the current state of play.In the...
View ArticleArticle 11
THE TORIES, THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT AND THE MAKING OF POLITICAL NOISENothing quite marks the decline of the power of British government more powerfully than the performance of the country’s political...
View ArticleArticle 10
So the encampment at Dale Farm has been broken up. The travellers and protestors have left. The final throw of the litigious dice has failed, and the expulsion has been achieved. How did the judicial...
View ArticleBritain runs the Council of Europe!
The cat is well and truly out of the bag now.The Foreign Secretary has announced the government’s priorities for its chairmanship of the Council of Europe. ‘Chairmanship of the Council of Europe,’ I...
View ArticleArticle 8
Well there you are: the European Court of Human Rights has decided not to precipitate a crisis of authority between itself and the UK Supreme Court after all. In today’s Grand Chamber decision in...
View ArticleAl-Khawaja and Tahery v UK
Surprise – or no surprise at all? The European Court of Human Rights has decided not to precipitate a crisis of authority between itself and the UK Supreme Court. In the long awaited Grand Chamber...
View ArticleSt Paul's - reflections on the court ruling on eviction
All flourishing Christian organisations need to steer a careful course between mammon and morality. On the one hand there is the wealth, power and influence that flow out of such success, especially if...
View ArticleAbu Qatada v UK
First Article 3.In the Abu Qatada case the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that he is not likely to be tortured or ‘ill-treated’ in Jordan if he is returned there to face the authorities. Now...
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