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Deirdre McCann - 27th April 2020
A few weeks before the lockdown, one of the most important UK labour law cases of the last decade was heard by the Supreme Court. Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson Blake has not attracted the attention paid to the Uber litigation, also to reach the Supreme Court later this year. Yet Mencap will have significant […]
Aashna Jain - 27th April 2020
The Apex court in India, right from the latter half of the 20th Century till as late as March 2020, has upheld the status of prisoners as people who have fundamental rights and are deserving of humane treatment. It has time and again been emphasised that the prisoners’ lives must not be reduced to animal […]
Jade Weiner - 10th April 2020
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the South African state has enacted regulations which allow for forced testing and quarantine. These regulations limit the rights of persons but are likely a justifiable limitation of rights. In a widely reported case, a family refused to be quarantined and fled the health care facility where the mother […]
Sophia Salmore - 9th April 2020
While official responses to the novel COVID-19 have focused on domestic impacts of the virus, we cannot overlook its impact on humanitarian crises and displaced populations. With over 126 million people in need of humanitarian assistance today and 70.8 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, a global approach is needed to avoid more loss of life. […]
Neelabh Bist - 4th April 2020
A High Court in India recently handed down a significant judgment relating to equality in educational facilities. The case involved a practice regularly carried out in Indian schools, where children are classified into different sections on the basis of marks secured in the previous examinations. The Court held this method of intellectual segregation as a […]
Ewan McGaughey - 30th March 2020
The corona virus has triggered a stock market crash sharper and faster than the global financial crisis. It threatens a depression unless we aggressively protect social rights. Companies with plummeting share prices, or evaporating customers, are prone to individually rational, but socially irrational herd behaviour. Companies lose confidence and fire workers. Workers lose income, and […]
Natasha Holcroft-Emmess - 27th March 2020
Governments around the world are taking decisive action to contain the spread of a novel coronavirus, (COVID-19), with heavy implications for human rights. Commentators have assessed containment measures in blogs on preventive duties, State responsibility, and the UK’s draft emergency legislation. Several States have now derogated from the ECHR to address COVID-19. This blog post […]
Jonathan Cooper - 23rd March 2020
The current coronavirus crisis has highlighted the weaknesses of UK law and the system of government. The Prime Minister spent weeks obfuscating. Each day he equivocated more and more people were exposed to the virus. Whilst the British were instructed in how to improve our handwashing techniques, Italy went into lockdown. The rest of Europe […]
Lynn-Sophie Temp - 16th March 2020
With over 500 cases of COVID-19 reported in Chinese prisons and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran, suspected of having contracted the virus, the question of what obligations States have to protect the health of prisoners in the event of outbreak of diseases could not be more relevant. The jurisprudence of the UN […]
Aradhana Cherupara Vadekkethil - 15th March 2020
In August 2019, couriers working for Foodora Inc. (Foodora), a web services company that provides an online marketplace platform connecting consumers to restaurants, voted on whether to join the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), with the Board electing to seal the ballot box pending clarification of the couriers’ status. Unlike many other jurisdictions in […]
Aradhana Cherupara Vadekkethil - 15th March 2020
On 4th of March 2020, French Court of Cassation (the country’s highest court for civil matters) in a landmark ruling confirmed the Paris Court of Appeal’s finding that Uber drivers are employees. Mr. X had petitioned the industrial tribunal with a request to reclassify his contractual relations with Uber as an employment contract, and had […]
Caitlin Salvino - 6th December 2019
On November 22, 2019, the provincial government of New Brunswick (Canada) announced it would be employing the notwithstanding clause for the first time. This follows the most recent and public threatened and actual uses of the notwithstanding clause by Ontario and Quebec in 2018. The notwithstanding clause is a ‘uniquely Canadian invention’ under section 33 […]