Court

Today

Oscar Edmondson

Lammy on trial over plans to scrap juries

12 min listen

Today we’re going to be talking about David Lammy, and his brand new plans to drastically reduce the number of jury trials in the UK in an attempt to address the backlog. With the backlog of cases due to be heard in courts already at 78,000, and heading for 100,000, the Justice Secretary believes that only radical solutions can tackle the ‘courts emergency’. But is he being too radical? This comes on the same day that Lammy announced that 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the last three weeks. But first, the Budget fallout continues and there has been a resignation but – crucially – it’s not the Chancellor.

Thursday

Harry Mount

Who is David Sherborne, libel lawyer to the stars?

If you’re a celeb with a burning grievance, the hottest place in town is an unassuming, Georgian terraced house in Gray’s Inn, Holborn. Five Raymond Buildings is the number one libel set in the country. And its most prominent barrister is David Sherborne, aka ‘Orange Sherbet’ – the permatanned schmoozer with the wind-tugged, auburn tresses. Sherborne is currently representing Coleen Rooney, wife of ex-England footballer Wayne Rooney, in the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case. She’s being sued for defamation by Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester striker Jamie Vardy. Mrs Vardy disputes Mrs Rooney’s allegation that Vardy leaked stories about her to the Sun. It’s the biggest libel case at the Royal Courts

Thursday

Ross Clark

Ed Sheeran is right about British courts

As they say in the music business, where there’s a hit, there’s a writ. It is something that no one knows better than Ed Sheeran, who yesterday won a legal battle over claims that his song Shape of You plagiarised an earlier song, Oh Why by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue. The judge ruled that Sheeran had neither copied the song deliberately nor subconsciously. After his victory, Sheeran said: Claims like this are way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there is no basis for the claim,

Wednesday

Matthew Scott

Starmer’s prosecution campaign is misguided

On Monday evening Sir Keir Starmer tweeted an explanation for why Labour would not be supporting the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill. Coming from a former director of public prosecutions this was dire stuff. First, and perhaps least importantly, the word ‘statues’ does not appear in the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill. Sir Keir knows this. What the Bill proposes is that where criminal damage is caused to a ‘memorial’ there should be no minimum financial limit before the case can be tried in the Crown Court, where the maximum sentence is ten years imprisonment. In practice, such a sentence has never, so far as I am aware, been

Monday

Olivia Robey

Child sexual abuse survivors are being let down

The Crown Prosecution Service’s latest grim statistics show that, despite the increasing number of police recorded rapes over the past five years, the prosecution rate has reduced. This state of affairs, has been branded as the ‘decriminalisation of rape’ by the Victim’s Commissioner Dame Vera Baird QC. And the data’s fine print also reveals a heart-breaking truth: the victims suffering from the worst outcomes are children. Just 16 per cent of victims aged 10-13 saw their abuser charged for the abuse they inflicted, with 55 per cent then seeing no prosecution take place. By contrast, the charge rate in the 25-59 victim bracket was 46 per cent, while the no prosecution rate was 30

Sunday

Steven Barrett

The Begum Appeal is a fundamental error of logic

There has been an emotional response to the case of Shamima Begum, quite rightly. It is not clear to me that lawyers are better equipped than politicians to navigate such emotions, but sadly we live in an age which is increasingly demanding legal answers to political questions. What is perhaps surprising is that, with uncharacteristic vigour, our Court of Appeal have jumped headfirst into the maelstrom. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) – created to consider cases like these – found against Ms Begum in February, which seemed largely uncontroversial at the time. But the latest decision was made by three Court of Appeal Judges, who turned their minds to two questions: