Human Rights in Ireland

“The gravity of this case is in my view of a different order from, for example, a murder committed by one individual upon another as a result of some sudden quarrel. There was a degree of general premeditation; it was a racist crime driven by hatred; it involved a gang of like-minded attackers; a lethal weapon was employed and known in advance to be carried; the victim was completely blameless and helpless. The high level of public interest in this case is at least in part a reflection of the abhorrence felt by right-thinking people at the nature of this crime. This, too, should be reflected in the sentence.”

Thus Mr Justice Treacy summarised the thinking behind his imposition of Detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure upon Gary Dobson and David Norris – who were yesterday convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The sentence is the juvenile equivalent of a life sentence and the two will now be imprisoned, or on release on license, for the remainder of their lives. Dobson will serve a minimum term of 15 years and 2 months, while Norris, the younger of the two, will serve a minimum term of 14 years and 3 months. These terms take into account the fact that the offence was motivated by racial hatred, but also that it was committed by a group of men who were juveniles at the time.

On January 19 next Martin Scheinin, former UN Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Human Rights in the Pursuit of Counter-Terrorism and Professor of International Law at the European University Institute will give a lecture entitled “UN Security Council Terrorist Listing and Judicial Review: The Current State of Play”. The lecture, hosted by the Centre of European Law at King’s College London, will be chaired by David Anderson Q.C. of Brick Court Chambers. Anderson is the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. The event promises to explore some of the difficult issues surrounding asset-freezing at UN and EU level. The lecture will be hosted at Parliament Chamber at Inner Temple. It is open to the public but registration is required. To register, see the CEL website.

Gary Dobson & David Norris have been found guilty of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The Lawrence murder and the failure of the Metropolitan Police Service in dealing with it prompted a damning report from Lord Macpherson following an Inquiry that concluded in 1999. The report famously described the Metropolitan Police Service as ‘institutionally racist’ – though the precise meaning of that term, and its application to the MPS, was contested after publication. The identity of those suspected of Lawrence’s killing was controversially revealed by the Daily Mail in February 1997 when it emblazoned its front page with the headline ‘MURDERERS’ and pictures and names of five men. The paper challenged the five men, of whom Dobson & Norris were two, to sue if the accusation was false. No suit was brought. An initial attempt at a private prosecution by the Lawrence family had resulted in an acquittal for lack of evidence. However, the availability of new evidence – based on hair and DNA samples found on the suspect’s jacket, resulted in the Crown Prosecution Service pursuing the case once more. The retrial follows a change to the UK law on double jeopardy that was introduced by the Criminal Justice Act in 2003. Joshua Rozenberg discusses the change and its effect on the Lawrence case over at the Guardian Law. A timeline of the case is also available. Dobson & Norris will be sentenced tomorrow.

The exploitation of Ireland’s natural resources has given rise to some of our livelier posts of the past year. 2012 may see an ‘anti-fracking’ campaign in Clare join the Shell to Sea campaign on the battlefield over the state’s efforts to exploit natural resources in the West of Ireland. ‘Fracking’ is shorthand for a process known as ‘hydraulic fracturing’ that, in short, involves pumping high pressure fluids into the ground to fracture the underlying rock and make it easier to extract fossil fuels such as gas. Opposition groups include ‘What the Frack‘ in Ireland and ‘Frack Off‘ in the UK. Last Tuesday’s Irish Examiner carried a letter of opposition from the Centre for Environmental Living & Training, based in Scariff, County Clare and a report in today’s Irish Times suggests that the campaign against fracking in the Clare Basin will be stepped up in the new year. Read Full Post »

Last Wednesday, the European Court of Justice issued a flurry of judgments just before the Christmas break. Indeed, there were so many interesting and important decisions amongst the twenty or so handed down that seems foolish to consider any of them the ‘most important’. Nonetheless the judgment in NS and Others v SSHD (C-411/10) must be a contender for the title. The case concerns an asylum seeker in Britain who first entered the EU through Greece. The Dublin Regulation, which governs this aspect of EU asylum law, would ordinarily dictate that the applicant should be sent to Greece to have his asylum claim considered there. However, Mr Saeedi challenged his transfer to Greece, claiming that his human rights would be infringed by such a transfer as Greece would be unable to process his application. NS was joined with an Irish case, ME & Others v Refugee Applications Commissioner & MEJLR (C-493/10), which raised similar questions for EU law. Read Full Post »

One could be forgiven, amidst the furore over the European Court of Human Rights’ Al-Khawaja judgment last Thursday, for missing the first report of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation on the operation of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc Act 2010. The Report runs to over 100 pages and is the most comprehensive account of UK terrorist asset freezing in print. It is the third report of the current Independent Reviewer, David Anderson Q.C., since he took up the post in February. Asset freezing is something of a speciality of his, as he has appeared in litigation in both EU and UK courts on the matter. It is therefore unsurprising that the Report exhibits the same attention to detail that made Anderson’s previous two efforts essential reading. Read Full Post »

The presumption of innocence is understood as a cornerstone of both United States and United Kingdom law. However, it is now, Noam Chomsky has claimed, ‘long disappeared’. Such an accusation is perhaps unsurprising coming from the most persistent critic of US foreign policy. Chomsky was speaking at the launch of a new academic journal, State Crime, and was referring to the increasingly controversial US tactic of assassination of al-Qaeda leaders and associated individuals. For Chomsky, this practices goes far beyond what he called the Bush administration’s ‘kidnapping’ to Guantanamo Bay. The current strategy is, Chomsky claimed, developing into a ‘massive global assassination campaign’.

Chomsky’s pedigree as a speaker on such topics is well established. In 1988, long before Osama bin Laden conspired to destroy the World Trade Centre, Chomsky wrote The Culture of Terrorism as a searing critique of US secret operations overseas. Since then he has held both Bush administrations as well as their Democratic counterparts to account in a range of polemic publications on power, Read Full Post »

Three Human Rights in Ireland authors have presented their work to the Civil Liberties section of the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference in Cambridge over the past two days. The Society is ‘the learned society for lawyers’ in the UK (and Ireland). Aoife Nolan presented her work entitled ‘Rights, Obligations and Vulnerability: Corporations and the Poor’ yesterday (see Aoife’s research), as did Cian Murphy, whose paper was entitled ‘UK Human Rights Law and Explicit Judicial Dialogue’ (see Cian’s research). This morning Fiona de Londras presented on ‘A (tentative) Typology of Judicial Approaches to National Security Law’ (see Fiona’s research). Details on the academic and other writings by the Human Rights in Ireland team can be found on our authors page.

The funeral of Dr Garret Fitzgerald was held on Sunday. At the end of a week of national self-reflection an early missive of the late statesman deserves revisiting. In the Winter 1964 issue of Studies Fitzgerald addressed the question what sort of Ireland do we want to see here in ten years time? The article is entitled Seeking a National Purpose and is well worth a read. Fitzgerald opens by stating that ‘the urgent need to develop an agreed philosophy for social action is perhaps greater today in Ireland than at any earlier time’. If that was true then it is just as true now. Fitzgerald then highlights a selection of the influences on our thought – beginning, naturally, with Christianity and republicanism but also incorporating ‘the Protestant Anglo-Irish Tradition’ and ‘English liberal ideas and socialist thought’. The inclusion of these latter two elements must have been visionary (and controversial) at the time. Fitzgerald’s recognition of the importance of the Anglo-Irish tradition came almost fifty years before Fintan O’Toole proclaimed Anglophobia dead in Saturday’s Irish Times. Read Full Post »

Former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, died yesterday. A businessman, politician, intellectual and writer, there are few aspects of Irish public life he did not touch upon over the course of his life. The print and electronic media abound today with tributes and memorials. It is clear that the country has lost a man whose own life and work still speaks to many of the issues facing Ireland today – the usefulness of Seanad Éireann as a gateway into politics for those with real experience and talent to offer, the difficulty of pursuing progressive social change in a country with a strong conservative history and the need to rejuvenate the public and economic life of the state at a time when both are languishing. Several of us that now call HRinI home were in a packed Boole 4 lecture theatre in October 2002. The Nice Treaty was the subject of the first debate of the UCC Philosophical Society’s year and for many of us it was the first debate we had attended at university. An articulate and well-prepared ‘No’ campaign led by MaryLou MacDonald presented their case with vigour. Garret Read Full Post »