It's no surprise the government wants to take drastic action on asylum appeals. Replacing the existing tribunal with a new body isn't a good answer in my view, though. The Home Office bears a heavy responsibility for inefficiency in the existing system.
The asylum appeal backlog has hit 80,000 cases. This chart, which includes asylum appeals lodged and asylum appeals disposed of, shows what kind of trouble the immigration tribunal is in. www.gov.uk/government/s...
The revocation of citizenship is a fundamental and brutal discretionary power of the state.
One of the more depressing themes in recent judgments is how the courts nod-along and shrug when faced with this brute exercise of fundamental power, rather than subjecting this power to anxious scrutiny.
Don’t know exactly what this guy said and obviously wouldn’t take the Tories as a reliable source, but fundamentally we should push back at the idea that being extracted from an Egyptian torture prison is dependent on having behaved nicely on social media
*Stares from the part of the UK in which jury trials were ditched in very many serious cases half a century ago*
Imagine coming up with a proposal so stupid, so unworkable, so thoughtless, that it makes Robert Jenrick look sane by comparison.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Press cutting of the printed version of the story
Politically motivated attacks on the legal profession are irresponsible and dangerous. Legal organisations representing 250,000 lawyers have come together to express grave concern.
Read the statement
www.barcouncil.org.uk/resource/vil...
Read the news
www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...
Recent media commentary has focused on members of Garden Court Chambers and others who sit as part-time judges.
This is Garden Court's statement 👇
gardencourtchambers.co.uk/garden-court...
#RuleofLaw #Judicialindependence #SeparationOfPowers #Constitution
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
superb - Robert Jenrick is supporting the case of asylum seeker, who is appealing against a public order conviction, using the ECHR bsky.app/profile/rola...
"The overwhelming majority of asylum seekers want to share in our standards and escape from persecution or civil war. To describe them as thieves or rapists is not just dishonest but encourages the worst sort of prejudice in our communities," writes Michael Heseltine.
https://bit.ly/4mUIeM
Note how we’ve moved from concerns about people arriving irregularly in small boats to wrecking the lives of people who are by definition here entirely lawfully
🚨 Raise the alarm: While the Rwanda policy drew outrage, a new wave of harmful immigration policies is going under the radar.
Detention + deportation changes are deeply damaging, and we’re urgently fundraising to provide free legal support.
Read more & donate: www.biduk.org/articles/rai...
Much of the furore around the use of Article 8 ECHR in immigration cases is manufactured, as @alicedonald.bsky.social and co-authors highlight in this new, must-read report. The problem has been supercharged since Leveson LJ identified it a decade ago:
www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/defaul...
A new report from the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford examines how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is represented in the UK media 📄
Read more 👇 www.law.ox.ac.uk/echr
@ox.ac.uk @oxfordlawfac.bsky.social
'Analysis revealed frequent misreporting of immigration tribunal cases, as well as mischaracterisations of the UK’s system of immigration appeals and the role played by the ECHR in this context.'
The #LALY25 judges award for ⭐️⭐️Outstanding Achievement ⭐️⭐️- sponsored by Matrix Chambers – goes to Stephanie Harrison KC @gardencourtlaw
gardencourtchambers.co.uk/barrister/st...
She starts by thanking the crowd and the awards, saying this is the award that matters most
Westfield, Stratford, London
@stolenride.bsky.social my partner’s bike was stolen between 8-10pm this evening outside Westfield (1 Endeavour Square) - photo of bike below
I'm proud to be a member of @gardencourtlaw.bsky.social alongside some incredibly talented and dedicated barristers. But it is wrong and it undermines the rule of law to attack a set of chambers for the clients some members represent.
As you might have guessed, the article is actually an attempted hit job on us collectively. There's a serious point here, made very well by @joshuarozenberg.bsky.social in this article: open.substack.com/pub/rozenber...
The Spectator on @gardencourtlaw.bsky.social:
'…lawyers of undoubted intellect and skill…’
‘…idealists, gifted advocates and politically passionate…’
‘…radically effective…’
‘…no doubting the skill or zeal…’
‘…Garden Court racks up victories…’
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
6) the wider context of the Tories doxxing immigration lawyers is a backhanded swipe at Starmer (a lawyer) and the kind of far right populist bullying that has already led to attempts to kill and maim immigration lawyers and asylum seekers. Jenrick should be ashamed of himself.
5) I am not personally close friends with Greg or anything, but you can't be an immigration lawyer and not know of the absolutely sterling high quality of his work and of his generosity with his time and skills. He is funny and acerbic and he is a role model for many.
4) For someone like Greg, being a part time judge is a form of public service. He's earning less than he might doing other work when he's sitting as a judge, but when top lawyers sit as judges we are lucky to have their expertise contributing to the protection and development of the law.
3) Judges are recruited from a wide cross section of society. There are immigration judges who were Home Office employees before they became judges and there are immigration judges who have only represented individual immigration claimants in the past. That doesn't mean they won't apply the law.
2) When a lawyer becomes a judge they are from then on expected to present appropriately in their public communications. But that doesn't mean they can never in their lives have expressed a political opinion. Greg only recently became a judge and these tweets are more than 10 years old mostly.
1) When politicians and the media pick on judges like this it is simply bullying, because the judge is not permitted to respond or defend themselves. If Greg (an exceptionally bright, articulate and generous-spirited lawyer) could he would *wipe the floor* with a disingenuous weasel like Jenrick.
I have seen that Jenrick, the Times and Daily Mail have been targeting expert immigration lawyer Greg Ó Ceallaigh KC, who is also a part time immigration judge (a deputy Upper Tribunal judge). A couple of quick points about the misinformation involved in this.
