Judges and rights exam update - contains link to excellent revision source

As if recent cases by judges on civil liberties weren’t enough to convince students that the judiciary is far from the most boring topic on the AS syllabus (see my earlier posting on this), the Supreme Court yesterday did us a big favour in making one of the most controversial rulings by UK judges in recent history.

Indeed, were it not for the perfect storm that Nick Clegg seems to have found himself in I am sure this would have been much higher up the news agenda.

Yesterday the five judges on the UK’s highest court of appeal on human rights (without being granted leave to appeal to Strasbourg) ruled that denying sex offenders the right to appeal to have their name taken off the sex offenders register (Sexual Offences Act 2003) was in breach of their right to a private and family life as covered by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

As the Daily Mail put it: “Paedophiles and rapists win right to wipe their names from register - because it could breach THEIR human rights.”

I don’t really think there is much for me to add to this, feeling that familiarisation with the story should be enough to prompt dicussion.

BBC background is here.

In terms of a brilliant revision source, I have come across this on the Guardian website while researching more on the sexual offenders case.

The article puts forward a cogent counter-argument to those who say that the judiciary has transformed from being a highly elitist institution which entrenches political power among the priviliged few into a bastion of liberty acting as a doorstop which protects the ordinary man from overmighty and successively ever more authoritarian governments. A great revision piece, for spicing up argument in essays.