Judges and Policy: A Delicate Balance – Speech by Lord Neuberger
Judges and Policy: A Delicate Balance (PDF)
Speech by Lord Neuberger
Institute for Government, 18th June 2013
Source: www.supremecourt.gov.uk
Category: legal aid
Short Cuts – London Review of Books
“A fundamental shift in the relationship between the government and the governed is taking place: by restricting access to the law, the state is handing itself an alarming immunity from legal scrutiny. There are several aspects to this: the partial or total withdrawal of state financial support for people who lack the means to pay for legal advice and representation; and for those who can pay, a restriction on which kinds of decision by public bodies can be challenged. In the area in which I work, criminal law, defendants who receive legal aid will lose the right to choose who represents them in court. Meanwhile, the misleadingly named Justice and Security Act, passed earlier this year, enables the government to conceal evidence from litigants by using national security as a trump card. All this is accompanied by an unbending hostility to human rights law, tainted by its association with Europe, even though this legislation at least offers the weak the possibility of redress for abuses by public authorities.”
London Review of Books, 6th June 2013
Source: www.lrb.co.uk
Lessons from eBay, cases without hearings and a divided profession: Neuberger assesses the law – Litigation Futures
“The court system ‘may well have something to learn from online dispute resolution on eBay and elsewhere’, the president of the Supreme Court has suggested.”
Litigation Futures, 19th June 2013
Source: www.litigationfutures.com
Legal aid cuts will drive out the best lawyers, supreme court president warns – The Guardian
“Reforms may not produce significant savings as it would result in more unrepresented litigants and longer hearings, says Lord Neuberger.”
The Guardian, 18th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
A gray new world – LegalVoice
“‘This is a derisory document’. Thus, Professor Roger Smith described the MoJ’s paper on Transforming Legal Aid, when he gave evidence to the Select Committee for Justice last Tuesday. The most senior members of the legal profession gave evidence about the potential impact of the proposals. The President of the Law Society, and the chairs of the Bar Council, Criminal Bar Association, and Criminal Law Solicitors Association all agreed that, if the Minister has his way, the criminal justice system will be irreparably harmed. The MoJ plans to introduce these changes by secondary legislation, although more than 90,000 signatories to an e-petition (Save UK Justice) have now called for a full debate in Parliament.”
LegalVoice, 17th June 2013
Source: www.legalvoice.org.uk
Legal aid cuts: What has changed? – BBC News
“Significant changes to civil legal aid in England and Wales came into effect on 1 April 2013, as part of a plan to reform the system and save £350m a year.”
BBC News, 18th June 2013
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Legal aid cuts ‘end high-profile BME cases’ – Law Society’s Gazette
“High-profile cases such as those of murder victims Stephen Lawrence and Victoria Climbié would not have been taken up by lawyers if the government’s legal aid cuts had been in place, a prominent solicitor-advocate has warned.”
Law Society’s Gazette, 17th June 2013
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
Sir Mark Hedley: The judge who opened the doors to Britain’s most secretive court – The Independent
“Sir Mark Hedley decided that the public should know about the judiciary’s highly sensitive rulings. He tells Emily Dugan why.”
The Independent, 16th June 2013
Source: www.independent.co.uk
Ministry of Justice plans to cut court services trigger strikes – The Guardian
“Court staff are being called out on strike on Monday amid growing opposition to the Ministry of Justice’s proposals to contract out services, cut legal aid and limit the use of judicial review.”
The Guardian, 13th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Family courts face collapse – LegalVoice
“The family courts were under unprecedented pressure in the month following the introduction of the LASPO cuts which removed legal aid from most family cases, reports Jon Robins. Cafcass, which looks after the interests of children involved in family proceedings, reported that in May there were a total of 5,061 new private law cases ‘representing the highest ever month on record’. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 removed legal aid for all family cases except where was evidence of domestic violence as of April.”
LegalVoice, 13th June 2013
Source: www.legalvoice.org.uk
Record rise in child custody cases before legal aid cuts – The Independent
“A record number of child-custody cases were fought in court last month, in what experts believe may be a rush before cuts to legal aid start to bite.”
The Independent, 11th June 2013
Source: www.independent.co.uk
Family courts risk ‘collapse’ as surge in custody cases follows legal aid cuts – Daily Telegraph
“The family court system is in danger of ‘collapsing in on itself’ after a surge in the number of warring parents turning up in person to launch child custody cases because of legal aid cuts, leading lawyers are warning.”
Daily Telegraph, 11th June 2013
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Legal aid cuts will deny vulnerable women justice – The Guardian
“Campaigners warn that proposals to slash the legal aid budget will price trafficked women and victims of domestic violence out of the justice system.”
The Guardian, 10th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Six reasons the cuts to legal aid will ruin our justice system – The Independent
“Even the government’s own lawyers are horrified by these reforms.”
The Independent, 7th June 2013
Source: www.independent.co.uk
Conor Gearty: Legal Aid Changes – UK Constitutional Law Group
“The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 has already brought to an end the availability of legal aid across a whole range of areas of law that have direct relevance to the poor. Under cover of generalised claims about opportunistic litigation, the goal has clearly been to remove the capacity for challenge to the implementation (whether lawless or not) of the coalition’s various attacks on benefits. The same legislation also withdrew state support from foreign nationals in prison who are threatened with deportation, as many are – regardless of how long they had been here and how British they are in fact. The idea behind this change was to prevent resistance to removal by showing an infringement of the right to respect for private life in the Human Rights Act (a matter on which government now also intends to legislate separately). In both these cases, the government appears close to accepting that their goal is to prevent meritorious cases getting to court, on the ground that the laws that make them meritorious (human rights legislation; equality law; the common law of procedural fairness) are not laws they like. They have been tempted to remove the litigants rather than the laws, hoping there’ll be less fuss.”
UK Constitutional Law Group, 10th June 2013
Source: www.ukconstitutionallaw.org
PCT: incredible alternatives – LegalVoice
“Otterburn Consulting recently completed a survey to inform the Law Society’s response to the government’s consultation ‘Transforming legal aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system on price competitive tendering (PCT).’ The aim was to find out what the impact on firms would be, based on hard evidence and to evaluate whether the proposed system was likely to work in practice.”
LegalVoice, 7th June 2013
Source: www.legalvoice.org.uk
Crown court judges oppose legal aid changes – The Guardian
“Crown court judges have delivered a damning response to government plans to prevent defendants from choosing their solicitor and slice a further £220m off the legal aid budget.”
The Guaridan, 6th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
