Top 10 posts of all time

To celebrate our six-month birthday, and following the Inforrm Blog’s lead, here are our 10 most popular posts of all time.

We launched the UK Human Rights Blog on 31 March 2010 and since then have had 86,070 page views, with over 20,000 coming this month alone. So thank you to all of our readers, and enjoy the top 10! As always we welcome your comments on any aspect of the blog.

1. British Airways strike and human rights – The union strikes back
2. Pilot accused of 9/11 plot entitled to compensation
3. Rooney, Coulson and Hague scandals reveal the need for stronger protection of the press
4. Human Rights Act may be safe under new Justice secretary Ken Clarke
5. European Court of Human Rights sharpens its teeth
6. Sarah Ferguson scandal raises debate on right to privacy
7. Sex offenders’ lifelong living and travel restrictions were breach of human rights
8. Religious versus other freedoms: the future of Article 9?
9. Lord Bingham of Cornhill dies, loss of eloquent advocate for individual rights
10. France expulsion of Roma: the EU law perspective

Warning: Wild Lawyers at Large

A group of lawyers, academics and campaigners has been deciding how to shake up our legal landscape to make the future safer for our environment.

Sixty years of human rights and it feels like they’ve been with us for ever.  Two hundred and nine years since the founding fathers’ Bill of Rights came into effect in the United States; two hundred and eleven since the French National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of man. Now, there are more humans to seek out and flourish those rights than was ever imaginable in those brave new worlds.

In Paul Simon’s words, there are

Too many people on the bus from the airport

Too many holes in the crust of the earth

The planet groans

Every time it registers another birth

People’s rights and aspirations, as set out in these pioneering aristocratic instruments, may have reached the end of their useful life.

Open for your comments

Regular readers may have noticed that in the past few weeks we have the opened up reader comments on the UK Human Rights Blog. This took a few months to get going for practical reasons, but comments are now enabled for every new post.

Please use the comments section on this post to let us know if there are any new features which you would like to see appear on the blog.

We are approaching 6 months since launch, and we want to thank all of our readers for supporting the blog. The response has been fantastic. We have had around 80,000 page views since launch, and next week will have had around 20,000 during September alone. We also have over 1,000 subscribers on email, Facebook, RSS and Twitter. If you have not subscribed for free, then click here to find out how.

Human rights roundup: Phone-hacking, family law wrangling and how to not represent yourself in court

Hoovering up the human rights news

Some of this week’s human rights news, in bite-size form. The full list of our links can be found on the right sidebar or here:

7 Sep | Phone tapping row prompts surveillance law review – politics.co.uk: More on the phone-hacking scandal. The government say they will look at whether the law needs changing to make convictions easier. See our post here.

7 Sep | Plans to extend freedom of information – Ministry of Justice: This is not new news, but it good to hear the government is still looking to fulfil its post-election pledge to”extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency” so that it is easier for the general public to get information from the government. See our posts here and here. The new government is placing great store in freedom of information as, in theory, better and easily accessible information will empower the ‘big society’ (that is, non-governmental organisations). Interestingly, Tony Blair has said in his new book that the Freedom of Information Act is one of his biggest regrets (see this FT blog).

Human rights roundup: The FCO, Shoesmith, and local authorities taking over the world

Some of this week’s human rights news, in bite-size form. The full list of our links can be found on the right sidebar or here:

FCO decision on human rights report ‘puts businesses at risk’ – The Law Gazette: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has threatened to cut back on its annual international human rights report. The President of the Law Society has said human rights are an “increasingly a prominent risk factor in business”, but it is not clear what this really means, beyond corporate social responsibility which is at most seems a peripheral business consideration. We questioned earlier this week (see post) whether foreign policy and human rights could or should mix.

Treasury attacked over equality impact of budget – The Law Gazette: More details of the Fawcett Society’s threatened judicial review of the budget, on the grounds that the Treasury did not carry out an appropriate equality impact assessment. Apparently, research by the House of Commons library has shown that 72& of the savings will come from women’s income. See our post on the disappearing Public Sector Equality Duty.

Burnham Market Book Festival: 1 – 3 October 2010

I hope you will excuse a brief promotional interlude, but my fellow Blogista, Rosalind English, is organising the second annual Burnham Market Book Festival which runs from 1st to 3rd October 2010 in Burnham Market, Norfolk.

The festival will feature plenty of fascinating speakers, including Simon Jenkins, Sara Wheeler, ‘Nicci French’, General Sir Richard Dannatt (former British Army Chief of General Staff) , Ben Macintyre and Jane Fearnley Whittingstall. Interviewers include Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times and Francine Stock, radio and TV presenter.

• More information
• Programme of events
• Booking form

New ways of sharing on the UK Human Rights Blog

You will notice that posts now have options underneath them which may it easier to email, print and share (on Facebook and Twitter) UK Human Rights Blog posts. Why not give it a try? Enjoy!

Please feel free to use the comment option on this post to let us know if there are any other features which you would like to see on the Blog.

Human rights news and case-law roundup

Hoovering up the latest human rights news

We recently started adding links to interesting new articles and case-law on the right the sidebar under the heading “Selected news sources”.

As of last week, these articles now appear on our Twitter feed (@ukhumanrightsb) and Facebook fan page too. Below is a quick rundown of some of the most recent stories. The full list of links can be found here.

17 Aug | Privacy law to stop rise in gagging orders by judges – Telegraph: We have posted on the coming libel reform and super-injunctions; Lord Neuberger is leading a review which may, according to the Telegraph, lead to a statutory law of privacy. The Head of Legal Blog queries whether this would be any different from Article 8 of the ECHR in any case.

New button for easy tweeting

We have added a new ‘Tweet’ button at the bottom of all posts (after you have clicked through to the full article). This means that if you use Twitter, you will be able to share our posts quickly and easily.

This is a good opportunity to explain how the blog links in with Twitter. Our Twitter feed can be found here, or by clicking on the Twitter icon which is always on the right sidebar.

The feed updates instantly with links to new posts on the blog, as well as with all of the links to external human rights news items which are listed along the right sidebar. For more information on how to keep updated through Facebook, RSS and Twitter, you can always click on the subscribe tab at the top of the page. Enjoy!

Human rights news and case-law roundup

We recently started adding links to interesting new articles and case-law on the right the sidebar under the heading “Selected news sources”.

As of last week, these articles now appear on our Twitter feed (@ukhumanrightsb) too. Below is a quick rundown of the most recent links. The full list of links can be found here.

• 4 Aug | European Court Rules on Prohibited Weapons in Armed Conflict, Retroactivity: This is a case about the supply of mustard gas to Saddam Hussein, in the European Court of Human Rights. A man prosecuted for supplying thiodiglycol (mustard gas). He complained under Article 6 of the Convention that the Dutch Supreme Court had failed to answer his argument that since Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti were beyond the jurisdiction of the Netherlands courts, he ought not to have been convicted as their accessory. He also complained under Article 6 or Article 7 of the Convention that section 8 of the War Crimes Act did not meet the standard of lex certa (certain law). Both arguments were rejected and the application declared inadmissible [see paras 68ff and 96]