Day: September 17, 2013

 

Barristerblogger has always been rather short of pictures.

 

However our top photographer  has sent in a series of inspiring pictures of London court facilities with the suggestion that I should publish them to a wider audience.

 

Sadly I am now a rare visitor to London courts but it is interesting to see how the inspirational architecture and facilities are playing their part in keeping up the morale of a profession which might otherwise be feeling a little jaded. Continue reading “Pictures of London Crown Courts”

The judgement by Judge Peter Murphy that a defendant cannot give evidence while wearing a niqaab covering her face was written with crystalline clarity. He acknowledged all the difficulties of trying to balance sincerely held religious convictions with the imperatives of justice. He gave due consideration to the Bench Book, the Judicial Studies Board publication that is meant to give practical guidance to judges, and rightly concluded – in very measured and judicial terms – that it offered only anodyne and useless pieties. He analysed any number of British, European and Commonwealth cases on the subject. Nevertheless his judgement was wrong and, unless overturned by the Court of Appeal it threatens to wreak grave injustice on devout Moslem women. Continue reading “Veiled defendants should be allowed to give evidence”