Law

Nope, really, fuck off:

Jury trials for all except the most serious crimes such as rape, murder and manslaughter are set to be scrapped under radical proposals drawn up by David Lammy.

Do one.

As it happens, from yesterday:

And so it is with many another crime. It’s the jury that protects us from the insanity of our rulers. Because it’s the jury that subjects everything our rulers want to do to us to the “No, we’ll not be having with that” test of a grouping of average and normal people.

Which is why our rulers hate juries because they hate the idea that their impositions can be rejected by the mere people themselves. Thus my headline.

Juries are our ability to tell the politicians to Fuck Off, Twatface. Which is why they’re both so valuable and also so hated. After all, if we weren’t allowed to tell the Twatfaces to Fuck Off we’d have to hang them instead, right?

Unelected Lords are blocking assisted dying – this is a democratic outrage
Simon Jenkins

In the Commons they said don;t worry too much about the details, they’ll be sorted out in the Lords. Now the Lords are sorting out the details and this is an outrage?

Fuck off.

In July 2025, the international court of justice delivered a landmark decision that clarified that all states were bound under international law to tackle the human-made climate crisis, which the judges unanimously concluded posed an “urgent and existential threat” to the planet’s life-sustaining systems and therefore humanity itself.

The ICJ advisory opinion built on rulings from hundreds of climate lawsuits across the world over the past decade or more, and added further legal weight to strong decisions from the inter-American court of human rights in July 2025 and the international tribunal on the law of the sea in May 2024.

They do seem to take them all over, don’t they? At which point we should probably start leaving them….

Turkey issues genocide arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu

Now that the siege is over and people can get in and have a look around those cries of genocide are rather receding. Because it’s blindingly obvious that there isn’t mass starvation nor famine. Which is what the important part about the claims of genocide was.

So, indictement after it’s obvious that the crime claimed was not committed? Amusing, no? Politics hasn’t got the moemo that we’re all now onto new and different claims?

Sex offenders will no longer be entitled to parental responsibility for children conceived through rape, under new measures proposed in parliament.

In a government-backed amendment to the Victims and Courts Bill, due to come before parliament on Monday 27 October, parental responsibility will automatically be restricted where a child is born of rape.

New reforms will also see parental responsibility restricted when a parent is convicted of serious sex offences against any child, not just their own.

“Yeah, but wot if some bird decides to fit up a bloke for a sex offence so’s to stop ‘im seeing ‘is kids?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, no one would do that!”

“Met many ‘umans, ‘ave yer?”

The other thing would be absence of parental responsibility so, well, they don’t have to pay child support either?

He said: “Some of this was just translations and some of it was cut-and-paste. A lot of things were from the British media. It was more like a copyright infringement than an espionage issue.”

Brown said he considered that “stronger evidence” might have been presented during the trial that he might not have seen. The Observer understands the prosecution did disclose all the available material to the defence team, which considered none of it could be reasonably described as prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK.

Well, yes, I imagine the defence would put it that way. They are, after all, the defence.

A judge has branded a judicial review application into the use of SAS force in an IRA ambush more than three decades ago as “ludicrous” and “utterly divorced from reality”, The Times can reveal.

Rilly?

However, Roisin Nugent, the daughter of one of the IRA men, Tony Doris, challenged that decision, arguing that Soldier B should have paused after every shot to consider whether it was absolutely necessary to fire another one.

Ah, yes, ludicrous.

Majority of family court cases in England and Wales feature domestic abuse, watchdog says

Erm, what else are family courts going to be dealing with ither than dysfunctional families?

Nearly 90% of cases before the family courts in England and Wales show evidence of domestic abuse, a watchdog has disclosed.

Physical, psychological or sexual abuse of a member of the family or household was uncovered in 87% of cases, according to a review ordered by the domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs.

The abuse was frequently not recognised as an “active issue” or taken seriously with regard to the type of contact children would go on to have with the abusive parent, she said. In more than half of the cases reviewed, unsupervised overnight contact was ordered.

‘Mazin’ how the idiots can be even worse than your ingoing prejudices, eh? This is the social workers (or that type) discovering abuse that no one else has noted.

A federal grand jury has indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general, for bank fraud, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, personally presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, the person said. US attorneys do not typically present to a grand jury.

“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York state attorney general,” James said in a recorded video statement on Thursday.

“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. The president’s actions are a grave violation of our constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties.”

Her charges against him were clearly politically motivated. But, as sometimes happens, they enraged the bear not killed it. So there’s that.

There’s also the interesting question of whether Ms. James actually is guilty of bank fraud of course.

The justice secretary, David Lammy, has ruled out reintroducing charges for employment tribunals after a backlash from unions over the proposals.

The Guardian revealed last week that ministers were considering a plan to charge workers a fee to take their bosses to court as part of negotiations in this year’s spending review. Trade unions responded with fury, labelling the idea a “disaster”.

The employer has to bear all the costs of every attempt. Employees none of any. There are going to be more claims than might really be justified, aren’t there?

Donald Trump has not had the opportunity to pack the US supreme court to nearly the same degree. Nor has he, despite his brash, bullying ways, done much to pressure or browbeat the court’s nine justices. Nevertheless, the court’s conservative supermajority has ruled time after time in favor of Trump since he returned to office. The six conservative justices have fallen into line much like Hungary’s and Turkey’s judges, even though the supreme court’s justices have life tenure to insulate them from political pressures.

Possibly because what Trump’s doing – or at least those issues whoch have reached the SC – is constitutional and legal?

I blame Tony Blair:

Labour sabotaged the trial of two alleged Chinese spies by refusing to describe the country as the “enemy”, it has been claimed.

Chris Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33, had been accused of handing foreign policy reports to the Chinese government when charges against them were dropped last month in what the prime minister’s spokesman described as an “extremely disappointing” turn of events.

Prosecutors said that the “evidential standard” for the offence — namely the collecting and passing of information that would be “directly or indirectly useful to an enemy” — was “no longer met”.

It has now emerged, however, that ministers withdrew a key witness who had been tasked with testifying that China was an “enemy” of the UK, according to The Telegraph.

For it was ‘ee that downgraded the punishment for Hig Treason from the hempen dance.

Not that that’s wholly relevant given that the trouble here is withholding evidence, not the punishment, but fun just to mention it again.

Before sentencing Combs on Friday, Subramanian also delivered remarks in court and said that Combs “abused the power and control with women you professed to love”.

“You abused them physically, emotionally and psychologically,” he said.

Subramanian said that “a substantial sentence must be given” to “send a message to abusers and victims alike that abuse against women is met with real accountability”.

But of course Combs was found not guilty of everything except Mann Act violations – transporting someone interstate for the purposes of paid sex or whatever it is. The judge is then sentencing him for all the stuff he was found not guilty of. Or even hadn’t been charged with and possibly weren’t even illegal.

That seems, umm, odd shall we say?

Nope, never:

A friend of a British couple who died at a Swiss clinic for assisted dying has raised concerns that the wife was coerced by her husband into ending her life.

Ruth Posner, 96, and her husband, Michael, 97, sent an email to friends on Tuesday announcing that by the time the message was read they would both be dead.

Julia Pascal, 75, a close friend of the couple, said that although they both openly discussed planning to take their own lives for two years, she felt that Mrs Posner, an actress, was emotionally controlled by her husband.

How could anyone even dream there could be any coercion?

Retired US financier Howard Rubin was arrested Friday on sex-trafficking charges for allegedly trafficking dozens of women, including former Playboy models, to be sexually and physically assaulted during encounters in his New York City penthouse in a soundproofed room described in court papers as “The Dungeon”.

The actual accusations are women hired for slap and tickle – commercial sex – got more slap than desired or paid for.

Essentially.

Oh well. Beating up a whore is beating a woman up. Unless there’s specific agreement that you may beat her up of course. So, arguable case at least and why not charge?

Prosecutors said Rubin and Powers were sued for civil sex trafficking in November 2017, but a jury found at trial that they were not liable. The case has been appealed.

Ah, second bite at cherry. Tsk.

Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected more people whom he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges, a day after the justice department indicted former FBI director James Comey and faced a torrent of criticism for enacting the president’s campaign of retribution.

So that’s one way of telling the story.

Trump’s blunt remarks underscored the perilous moment for his political adversaries, given that the justice department pressed ahead with criminal charges against Comey, even though it was widely seen – inside and outside the administration – to be a weak case.

The indictment against Comey, filed in federal district court on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, alleged that he misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he stood by his previous testimony to Congress claiming he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak to reporters.

But what if he did lie to Congress? He should get away with it? Or not?

And, erm, isn’t in court where this is all supposed to be decided?

James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding, the latest move in the president’s retribution campaign against his political adversaries.

The indictment, filed in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, shows Comey’s charges centred on whether he lied and misled lawmakers during testimony in September 2020 about the Russia investigation.

Obviously, there’s a danger in prosecuting your predecessor. At some point someone’s going to say bugger that and they’ll not allow a successor to take office to prosecute them.

On the other hand this goes back to the Steel dossier, piss tape and Russia running intereference for Trump, right? And someone simply does have to get prosecuted for that shit. For that too is all political games well beyond what we want in anything like a democracy.

So, well, maybe then, eh?

Tulip Siddiq has held a Bangladeshi passport and national identity card, documents seen by The Times appear to show, directly contradicting her previous claims.

Officials in Dhaka have uncovered records of a passport issued in London in September 2001 when Siddiq was 19 and a national identity card issued in January 2011 belonging to the Labour MP. Copies of the documents were shared with The Times and Prothom Alo, a prominent Bangladeshi newspaper.

Just to be fair:

When presented with copies of the documents, a spokesman for Siddiq claimed that they were “fabricated” and part of a “politically motivated smear campaign” by Bangladeshi authorities.

“This is a deliberate and desperate attempt to undermine her credibility and reputation,” he said.

Ho Hum.

Main suspect in Madeleine McCann case due to be released from German prison
Authorities say they no longer have legal justification to hold Christian Brückner in jail after serving rape sentence

He’s done his time for what he’s been convicted of. So, he goes free.

This is not a wholly complicated concept.

And lawyers should know better than anyone that there is nothing more powerful than the truth.

We have an adversary legal system. There is no investigatory magistrate impartially searching for the truth. There are two hugely biased advocates seeing who they can persuade by arguing their client’s case.

If you think being a barrister is about the truth then perhaps another career might suit better?