Tag: public interest
-
Chris Rowe: Requalifying Article 8: The Immigration and Asylum Bill
The Immigration and Asylum Bill is the government’s third attempt to directly change how judges interpret and apply Article 8. Below I assess the likely impact of the proposed changes in the context of the previous reform efforts in 2012 and in particular 2014. I argue that (a) as previously the Bill does not require the courts to decide Article…
-
Lewis Graham and Leah Trueblood: A right to information in domestic law: five points of interest for public lawyers
In a recent decision, the Upper Tribunal (‘the UT’) has found that the operation of section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (‘FOIA’) breaches the right to access information under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’). The decision will obviously be of interest to lawyers working in the field…
-
Dane Luo: The Anomalous Islands of Public Interest Functions Immune from Judicial Review
The Attorney-General is an ancient office that is endowed with a very wide range of discretionary powers and functions. Some of those are classed as ‘public interest functions’. These derive from statutes and the prerogative, and include granting consent for certain prosecutions, applying for orders preventing vexatious litigants from bringing proceedings, entering a nolle prosequi,…
-
Antonia Layard: Darwall and the Public Life of Private Property
When wealthy landowners, Alexander and Diana Darwall, sued a national park authority to stop people pitching their tents on the Dartmoor Commons, few expected the dispute to take a constitutional turn. Yet this was the outcome of Darwall v Dartmoor National Park Authority[2025] UKSC 20, where the Supreme Court’s decisive rejection of the landowners’ claims…
-
Conor McCormick: A law officer log: Recent developments concerning the office of Attorney General and its equivalents
Today marks the publication of my book on The Constitutional Legitimacy of Law Officers in the United Kingdom, which contains a detailed analysis of the functions exercised by each law officer in the UK and a conceptual analysis of their constitutional legitimacy. In this contribution, I offer some thoughts on the timeliness of the book and…
-
Richard Danbury: Cliff Richard and Private Investigations
There is an old joke, in which a man is driving through the countryside, lost. He stops his car in a small village to ask a local for directions. The local responds by saying: ‘you want to get where? Oh, to get there, I wouldn’t start from here.’ It’s a joke my children wouldn’t get,…