Law

Shabana Mahmood’s plan to house more asylum seekers in former army barracks is facing a major hurdle after the high court ruled that a policy change forcing torture victims to share rooms was unlawful.

According to a judgment seen by the Guardian, the government failed in its duties when it forced survivors of trafficking, torture and other serious forms of violence to share rooms with strangers.

This was done – obviously – on the public tenpence. Legal aid etc etc.

So, when do we get all Dick the Butcher on these people?

Seems a bit extreme:

Patagonia has launched a trademark lawsuit against an environmentalist drag queen named Pattie Gonia, who has accused the outdoor clothing company of “trying to erase an activist”.

Wyn Wiley, who performs as Pattie Gonia, has accumulated millions of followers online for their environmental activism, raising almost $4m for non-profits so far. Last year they raised $1m while hiking 100 miles in full drag from Point Reyes national seashore to San Francisco.

Patagonia, which takes its name from an enormous geographical region spanning Argentina and Chile, filed its trademark infringement lawsuit against Wiley on 21 January. The suit was filed to the federal court in Los Angeles.

I mean, really?

Ah:

The company, which is suing Wiley for a “nominal” $1 in damages plus legal fees, said that it took action after Wiley filed a trademark application in September to use the brand Pattie Gonia to sell clothing and promote environmental activism, which it claims would “irreparably harm” its brand.

Ah, no, that makes perfect sense. You do actually have to defend a trademark. Otherwise it fails. Pattie Gonia condoms, grape jelly or vacuum cleaners wouldn’t be a problem. But outdoor clothes, obviously, sue!

Britain used to have a lawyer writing to the newspapers. “Dear sir, I note you used then word bic, it is in fact, Bic, the trademark of…..yours etc, A Lawyer” on exactly the same basis. A trademark must be protected…..

The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been on an exoneration tour, with stops including an interview with Mehdi Hasan and an appearance at the Oxford Union. Accused by a lawyer in his office of repeated sexual misconduct, which he denies, he claims that an internal review of the allegations has vindicated him but the situation is more complex than that.

It has been a year since Khan took a leave of absence while the claims against him were investigated as an internal employment matter. That absence has left the ICC under the control of his deputies, with important decisions to be taken in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Yet the ICC member states, which have ultimate authority over whether Khan stays or goes, have dawdled, acting as if they had all the time in the world. And the procedure that they relied on to resolve the matter turned out to be a travesty.

Who will watch the watchers and all that. So, the International Criminal Court cannot run its own affairs with what these internationally minded folk would call justice or even law. So, why in buggery bother with the court then?

Instead of making the credibility determinations needed to resolve this differing testimony, the OIOS delivered a 150-page “he said, she said” account.

That, in turn, was handed to a panel of three judges……The matter has now gone before the 21-member executive bureau of the Assembly of States Parties……The other option would be for the bureau to make its own credibility judgments, as reportedly 15 of the 21 bureau member states seem inclined to do……Some suggest that the complainant is acting at the behest of the Israeli government or its Mossad spy agency.

Oh, of course. The incredible efficiency of the international bureaucracy is all about The Jooos. Dust from orbit, it’s the only way.

Incompetent even:

Writing in 1943, the historian Henry Steele Commager delivered both a stern history lesson and a warning about the United States supreme court. The court, he said, had never been a friend to US democracy, and it never would be. For anyone committed to the advancement of majority rule, he added, judicial review “is wrong in theory and dangerous in practice”.

The danger that Commager noted was on full display on 29 April 2026, when the supreme court eviscerated section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As the Department of Justice explains, section 2 “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups … or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group”.

That’s what it does say and that’s exactly what the Supreme Court has just said it says. You can’t discriminate on hte basis of race in creating electoral districts that will likelky to won by someone of one race or anotyher. That’s racial discrimination and you cannot do it. Yea, even if the like race of the winner is something good and cuddly like Black of Hispanic or something.

Yer man here in The G is claiming that the court eviscerated that clause when in fact they confirmed it.

Austin Sarat, associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College,

Ah, well, Amhurst and reality have not been known to be in close contact for some time now.

If our culture wars are to reach a nadir, it may be this single, absurd moment: a white female influencer is moving to sue a positive action charity over anti-white discrimination.

If we say that you’re not allowed to discriminate on hte basis of race then that means we’ve said you are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race. This is not hard nor difficult to understand.

We do have laws against racial discrimination. So, do they wholly apply or not is an interesting question, no?

It is curious that Corcoran is advancing this case on the basis of the Equality Act. Indeed, it is this very piece of legislation that underpins schemes promoting diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).

Quite. What does that law actually mean? Can you discriminate on the basis of race or not?

The purpose of this law is to enrch lawyers. Job done.

That’s because according to the court, it is now acceptable for voting districts to have racially discriminatory impacts so long as they cannot be proved to have racially discriminatory intent. Alito’s opinion overturns the 1982 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, which specifically said that voting district maps needed to be drawn in a way that preserved the equitable representation of racial minorities – and that mere discriminatory impact was sufficient to render maps illegal, with no evidence of discriminatory intent required. Discarding congressional intent entirely, Alito claims that this provision is itself unconstitutional, because in order to ensure equal representation for Black voters, redistricting bodies have to consider race. This, the court contended, constitutes discrimination against non-Black voters. Instead, a facially race-neutral – but in effect racially discriminatory – new regime has been imposed.

Well, yes. If race is not an acceptable measure of who votes in which district then race is not an acceptable measure of who votes in which district. That you like the current outcome doesn’t change this fact about racial discrimination.

It is difficult to say how many seats Democrats will lose in the coming Republican redistricting bonanza that the court’s decision will allow. A New York Times analysis found that the ruling would endanger about a dozen Democratic-leaning seats across the American south. A report by Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group led by the Georgia Democratic activist Stacey Abrams, says that Republicans could pick up as many as 27 seats.

So you’re saying that the current system of racial discrimination gives D 27 seats? Why is this good? Other than that you prefer Ds?

Three men were paid by a Russian speaking contact known as “El Money” to target Sir Keir Starmer in a series of arson attacks, a court has heard.
Roman Lavrynovych, 22, Petro Pochynok, 35, and Stanislav Carpiuc, 27 are accused of firebombing properties linked to the Prime Minister in May 2025.
On Wednesday, jurors were told the unknown Russian contact exchanged hundreds of messages with the individuals on Telegram in the months leading up to the attacks.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said there was planning and “reconnaissance” before the attacks took place.
He added that the motivation was financial, and not driven by any “particular political or ideological” agenda.

Well, that’s the case they’re running with so it must all be true, right? There’s also a certain sensibleness to it – we know rent lads will do stuff for money so if you’re looking for people to do stuff then…..

Those, obviously, skills can be more or less transferrable.

Note this is still in court.

In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.

“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the middle district’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Gerrymandering against a racial group is bad. OK. Gerrymandering in favour of a racial group is bad. OK by me. For, obviously enough, gerrymandering in favour of whites – say and as an example – would be gerrymandering against blacks, and in favour of blacks against whites.

Positive racial discrimination is still racial discrimination, right?

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”. The court’s decision on Wednesday is the latest in a series that dismantled the law, she wrote, including a major decision in 2013 case, Shelby County v Holder, that nullified another major provision in the law that required places with a history of discrimination to get changes pre-approved by the federal government before they went into effect.

“Under the court’s new view of section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote in a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. In fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.

“Today’s decision renders section 2 all but a dead letter,” she continued. “The decision here is about Louisiana’s district 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.”

Kagan is judging this on the outcome she prefers. Which is not how a constitutional court is supposed to work – rather, to judge on whether the law meets the tests of the constitution. As with Dobbs. Not whether there’s some way we can legalise abortion using the constitution, but does the constitution say the Feds have power over abortion? If the answer to two is no then that’s that – a matter for the States. Racial discrimination is Bad, M’Kay? So, nope, don’t do that.

In the months after the invasion, Essar entered into complex offshore arrangements that appear to have enabled the group to keep dealing with a Russian bank under sanctions from the west.

Essar shifted billions of dollars in loans, provided by the Kremlin-controlled lender VTB, from Cyprus to a subsidiary in the tax haven of Mauritius, where sanctions did not apply.

The Cyprus and Mauritius entities that took part in the transfer included subsidiaries of Essar’s UK arm, Essar Energy.

Essar said that UK sanctions law did not apply to the transaction and that it complied with all applicable sanctions law after taking advice from a leading law firm. But the restructuring “raises red flags in relation to possible [sanctions] circumvention”, according to a leading expert.

If something’s legal, it’s legal, right?

The United Nations is reviewing whether Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos surrender breaches international human rights laws in what could jeopardise the deal.
Officials are assessing allegations that the Prime Minister is committing a “crime against humanity” for attempting to evict native Chagossians from the archipelago as part of his plans to cede the British territory to Mauritius.

The entire pay to give it away idea stems from the ‘uman rights lawyers. Hoist petard etc.

Of course, the reaction is going to be but, but, that’s not real ‘uman rights law, is it?

At least we still have juries, I hear you say? Well, only just. Juries, once held in high esteem by so-called political reformers, are the latest core democratic mainstay to be discarded for bogus and opportunistic reasons by this arbitrary and whimsical form of cabinet governance.

The bastards.

The English criminal jury system was developed and honed over the course of eight centuries. It has become the envy of the world as one of the fairest ways to determine guilt or innocence. A jury of 12 randomly chosen individuals has long been regarded as a vital bulwark against the excesses of government, the threats posed to basic human rights by oppressive legislation and, of course, arbitrary governance. It provides a constitutional and democratic safeguard unlike any other.

Quite so.

So, when do we get to hang them all?

This is from Sands. You know, the guy insisting we pay to give away Chagos. On the basis of a court ruling that does not, in law, apply to us nor our relations with Commonwealth countries?

That Sands, squealing about international law.

Donald Trump has ordered “a total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.

So, we’ve all decided, internationally and legally, that here are sanctions. If people bust the sanctions – bust that international law – then what do we do? Arrest the sanctions breakers?

Seems logical, even fair, really. So, what’s the argument against this? Other than Trump bad, socialists good?

Members of the House of Lords have proposed “totally unnecessary” and “very cruel” amendments to the assisted dying bill in an attempt to scupper it, the MP leading the campaign has said.

Kim Leadbeater said on Friday she believed that peers opposed to the bill were trying to block it by proposing hundreds of changes, including one that would require terminally ill people to be filmed as they undergo an assisted death.

That “wrecking amendment” is even a phrase tells us this.

This even before we get to the nonsense over this particular bill – pass it in the Commons and we’ll sort it out in the Lords etc. Then complain about it being sorted out in the Lords etc.

Three days earlier, on 2 September, he was reported to have given a verbal order for a drone strike against two unidentified men desperately hanging on to the smoking pieces of their shattered boat in the Caribbean after nine members of their crew had already been blasted. “Kill everybody,” was the order, according to the Washington Post on 28 November. It was the first of 21 strikes that the Pentagon states have so far killed 82 people who are said to have been “narco-terrorists”, though their identities are unknown. Hegseth denied knowledge of the second strike.

Can’t say I’m in favour of either the first or the second strike myself. But that’s not the point here.

The question of whether Hegseth had committed a criminal act was immediately raised in response to the Post report in a statement issued on 29 November by the Former Jags Working Group, which “unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both. Our group was established in February 2025 in response to SECDEF’s firing of the army and air force judge advocates general and his systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails. Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.”

This international war crimes law is really very clear. If you’re not at war – meaning declared war against a sovereign state – then you cannot commit war crimes.

Murder is obviously possible, piracy is not – piracy is by definition something done by a non-state actor. Genocidal crimes are obviously possible and so on. But war crimes require there to be a war.

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton,

Unbiased source there, right?

Any attempt by the Lords to block a bill backed by the Commons would breach long-established constitutional conventions because it would subvert the authority of the elected chamber.

Nonsense.

The Lords can’t refuse a finance bill nor, in the end, a manifesto committment. A private members bill? Have at it, maties.

Peers’ delay of assisted dying bill ‘could lead to constitutional crisis’
Opponents are playing with fire with 1,100 amendments, critics say, as filibuster tactics to defeat Kim Leadbeater’s law ‘threaten the upper chamber’s future’

They’re lying.

The US supreme court agreed on Friday to decide the legality of Donald Trump’s order to heavily restrict the right to birthright citizenship, the long-held constitutional principle that individuals born on US soil are automatically United States citizens.

The justices will hear the president’s request to uphold his executive order on birthright citizenship, issued just hours after Trump took office for his second term and immediately blocked from taking effect.

The order was a contentious part of the administration’s far-reaching immigration crackdown – and a step that would transform the interpretation of a 19th-century constitutional provision.

There’s an argument over what the constitution actually means. The people who sort out what the constitution means atr the Supreme Court. So, the issue then goes to…..shrug.

“Of course it’s right that I reflect on whether someone who has stolen two iPhones from Currys should be heard by a jury or should be heard by a magistrate or in some other way,” he said. “Because if they’re heard by a jury, that can take two or three days, and that enters the system and will hold up the rape case or the murder case. There are a group of defendants in ‘either-way’ cases who are playing the system, who effectively leave pleading guilty as late as possible.”

The trial is about whether someone has stolen two iPhones…..

Juries are an archaic and inefficient feature of Britain’s collapsing justice system. They survive only in some English-speaking countries as quaint relics of medieval jurisprudence. They deserve dispatch to the world of ducking, flogging, drawing and quartering.

That’s Sir Simon Jenkins. So, now we know what te wrong answer is we can proceed, right?