Tag: Ashers Baking Case
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Anurag Deb: Identity: Northern Ireland’s Gordian Knot
On 14 October 2019, the Upper Tribunal (UT) handed down judgment in SSHD v De Souza, immediately dividing commentators both in and outside Northern Ireland. Briefly, the UT had heard the Home Secretary’s appeal against the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) decision which had declared that the American claimant (respondent in the UT) was entitled to apply…
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Yossi Nehushtan and Stella Coyle: Ashers Baking (Part 2): Do Homophobes and Racists have a Right Not to Manifest Liberal Messages?
At the heart of the recent Supreme Court’s decision in Ashers Baking lies the ruling that nobody should be forced to express a view in which they do not believe. The unfortunate implications of this content-neutral reasoning go far beyond the circumstances of this case. This reasoning will result in vindicating behaviours that are founded…
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Yossi Nehushtan and Stella Coyle: Ashers Baking (Part 1): The Supreme Court’s Betrayal of Liberalism and Equality
Much has already been written about the recent Supreme Court judgment in Ashers Baking, but the debate has so far omitted an important argument: that the Court has, once again, ignored the legitimacy of the values that grounded the discriminatory practice of the religious service provider. Judgments based on content-neutral considerations have previously resulted in…
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Robert Craig: The Peter Hain Case: The Effect of Article IX
Peter Hain’s decision to breach an interim injunction granted by the Court of Appeal in the case of ABC v Telegraph Media Group has caused serious concern. It is one of the cardinal rules in Parliament that members should not interfere in ongoing legal proceedings and Hain did not wait until the end of the…
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Joanna Bell: The Supreme Court’s Approach to the Finality Clause in Lee v Ashers: A Response to Anurag Deb & Conor McCormick & Looking Forward to Privacy International
Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd [2018] UKSC 49 (‘gay cake’ case) has probably not escaped the attention of any public lawyer. As Anurag Deb & Conor McCormick have usefully pointed out in a recent blog post, however, what may have been overlooked is that this case is not only important from a human rights…
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Anurag Deb and Conor McCormick: Lee v Ashers: A Recipe for Jurisdictional Confusion?
On 10 October 2018, the UK Supreme Court handed down its judgment in Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd [2018] UKSC 49, sparking much debate and commentary. The judgment is legally important for how it conceptualises freedom of expression, and for the surprising evidence of judicial overreaching it contains. Given that others have already considered…
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Jacob Rowbottom: Cakes, Gay Marriage and the Right against Compelled Speech
In the high-profile decision in Lee v Ashers, the Supreme Court had to consider a customer’s rights against discrimination along with the baker’s right to freedom of expression. In its finding for the baker, the Supreme Court took an important step in developing a domestic doctrine against ‘compelled speech’. While the outcome of the case…
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Chintan Chandrachud: Bittersweet Judgment: The UK Supreme Court in the Ashers Baking Case
Bakeries in the United States and the United Kingdom have become the latest sites for contestation about rights. Last December, the US Supreme Court upheld a Christian baker’s right to refuse to bake a cake for the wedding of a gay couple in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Case. The UK Supreme court has now held, on…