Tag: Austin v UK
-
David Mead: Be careful what you wish for….it may never happen: the curious incident of peaceful protest under the coalition
If a week’s a long time in politics, then two years is surely a couple of lifetimes? Hidden away – it now seems – in the coalition’s Programme for Government was the pledge to “restore rights to non-violent protest”. Even in the civil liberties section, it was always the poor relation to the big hitters…
-
Helen Fenwick: An appeasement approach in the European Court of Human Rights?
This piece asks whether, in the light of UK proposals for the reform of the ECtHR, and in the wake of the outcry in the UK over the Qatada decision (Othman v UK), the Court is taking an approach that looks like one of appeasement of certain signatory states. Two very recent decisions will be…
-
David Mead: The Right To Protest Contained By Strasbourg: An Analysis of Austin v. UK & The Constitutional Pluralist Issues it Throws Up
The last few days have proved to be eventful for anyone interested in free speech and protest. First, Cambridge PhD student Owen Holland was rusticated for seven terms for reading out a poem that disrupted a speech being given by universities minister, David Willetts. Had this fallen to the magistrates, under say s.5 of the…