Innovative remedies under a flexible Constitution: A view from South Africa
As an undergraduate, the focal point of interest in a case was what happened in court. The judgment, and specifically the ratio; the facts, maybe the arguments from time to...
Cuts to the UN Human Rights Bodies? We Know What This Leads To
The global populist backlash against multilateralism and rights is reaching the UN treaty bodies. These reactionary politics are manifesting in States’ refusal to pay their dues to the UN (the...
Kimathi and Others v Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Kimathi and Others v Foreign & Commonwealth Office [2018] EWHC 2066 (also known as the ‘Mau Mau litigation’, after the Mau Mau rebellion that was instrumental in Kenya’s independence movement)...
African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Affirms the Right to Access Documents Necessary for Appeals
On 7 December 2018, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights delivered its judgment in the case of Mgosi Mwita Makungu v. Tanzania. This judgment affirms states’ obligations to...
The 40th Session of the Human Rights Council: Some Observations on State Behaviour
The UN Human Rights Council, which was created in 2006, is currently holding its 40th Session. The HRC is the UN’s main human rights body, and is a political body...
Diminishing Accountability, Corruption, and C.Y. Leung
The Hong Kong Bar Association formally issued a statement on 21st December 2018, regarding the Department of Justice’s choice to not obtain independent legal advice in its decision not to...
And then there were none: the decline of the right to access a lawyer?
On 9 November 2018, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in Beuze v Belgium that withholding a suspect’s right to legal assistance during police...
Parent Company Liability for Human Rights Abuses in the UK? We Need Clarity
The liability of parent companies for the extraterritorial human rights abuses committed by their subsidiaries has increasingly become a critical topic for both corporate and human rights litigators. The absence...
The Australian Legal Assistance Sector and the Critical Importance of Justice to Human Lives
In February 2017, I was invited to be an ‘expert adviser’ for the Law Council of Australia’s (LCA) ‘Justice Project’. I was initially reticent. Senate Inquiries (2004; 2009; 2015), reviews,...
The future of law clinics: Part 2 – The Law Clinic in the University
Earlier, I wrote about the role of law clinics as agents of social justice in a democracy. In this post, I will consider the institutional context in which law clinics...
The future of law clinics: Part 1 – Social Justice, Human Rights and Law Clinics
It was clear from an excellent workshop in Tel Aviv University last month that an impressive number and variety of innovative projects are operating in law clinics in universities and...
Haralambous: The Supreme Court, Closed Proceedings and the Common Law, Round Three
The right to a fair trial is undoubtedly one of the most sacrosanct rights in most modern legal systems, and is manifested in one of the most important articles in...
