Absolvitor: Scots Law Online

Oh dear. A valuable painting by Scottish watercolourist Tom Scott has been stolen from the Signet Library, home of the WS Society.

The painting, “I Cannae Hear Ye” is thought to have been taken over the Christmas holiday period from its home in Parliament Square off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

The library hosted a New Year party for approx. 200 people and some time between then and 5 January, the watercolour (worth up to £4,000) went missing.

Lothian and Borders Police are quoted as saying: “This has been an opportunistic theft of a relatively expensive piece of artwork, and we are eager to ensure it is returned to the library.”

According to Wikipedia, Tom Scott (1854-1927) was born in Selkirk. Known as the “Borders Painter”, his historical paintings reflect his lifelong interest in the archaeology and history of the area. His highly accomplished work is mainly depictions of the landscapes of Southern Scotland, and illustrative tableaux derived from local Legend and story.

Drawing from both the Arts and Crafts movement and the work of the Romantic School, he is however, little known outside of Scotland, where he has a loyal (but not necessarily honest) following.

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

A 600 member strong London Church won its legal battle this week against Lambeth Borough Council in a last minute out of court settlement.

The All Nations Centre in Kennington was served by Lambeth Council with a noise abatement notice on 25 September 2009, preventing the Church from amplifying their music or sermons to the congregation on threat of prosecution.

Although the Church has been at its current location for over 45 years, a small number of residents began complaining to the Council about noise levels shortly after the Church began a leaflet drop in the local community. A noise abatement notice was then served against the Church in September without any warning or discussion.

Church leaders believed the timing of the notice and the procedural irregularities meant that there were motives involved in the case. In October 2009, senior Pastor Abraham Sackey said: “The complaint has nothing to do with the noise and everything to do with our faith. Lambeth Council are driving us out and we feel harassed.”

The Church sought the advice of the Christian Legal Centre. The All Nations Centre decided to go to court with the help of the Christian Legal Centre in order to appeal the notice issued against them but at the last minute the notice was withdrawn.

CLC has noted the increasing use of Noise Abatement Notices being used to effectively to categorise worship or the singing of hymns as Noise Pollution.

Local MP Kate Hoey has backed the Church throughout. In December 2009 she said:

“They have been serving the local community for many years, consistently helping to improve the quality of life and overall well-being of people within the local community … It was therefore with a mixture of surprise and concern that I learned that they were served with a noise abatement notice.”

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Good news! You can now read my latest Yell.com blog posts by clicking on these links. And jolly interesting reading they make too.

• Innocent until presumed guilty;
• Court threat in election debate row; and
• Flyglobespan’s customers not protected ATOL.

In particular, I’d be interested in people’s comments on the proposal to allow evidence of previous convictions in criminal trials.

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

I note from browsing human rights and anti-terror law blog, The Lift that a report commissioned by the Scottish Government has called for an immediate review of the funding of CCTV cameras. The report reports that the cost of operating the snooping devices over the next three years is more than 40 Million pounds. It also points out that there has been little research into their effectiveness in preventing crime and disorder.

Apparently, there are about 2,200 CCTV cameras in public spaces such as city centres, parks and shopping centres across Scotland (except Aberdeenshire, which has none).

And, according to the Telegraph, in London just one crime is solved a year by every 1,000 CCTV cameras. As the leader quite pointedly asks: “If they do not stop crime or catch criminals, what are they for?”

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Good news, you can now read my most recent Yell.com blog post on the implications of the new Legal Services (Scotland) Bill. It’s called “The future of legal services in Scotland” and deals with the possibility that banks and supermarkets will become the principal providers of legal services in the not too distant future.

Sounds like fun, no? Quickie divorce with your Cheerios, Sir?

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

I’ve finally got round to updating the Courts & Case Law links page to include the Supreme Court and to reflect the change to the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The House of Lords’ judicial committee page is also still running, as an archive of their decisions between 1996 and 2009.

Better late than never, I always say …

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Westlaw Business and the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) have announced their agreement to provide global business law professionals with IFSB’s unique direction on Sharia law within the Westlaw Business Islamic Finance Centre.

The IFSB is an international standard-setting organization that issues global prudential standards and guiding principles for the industry, which includes banking, capital markets and insurance sectors. It also conducts research and coordinates initiatives on industry-related issues.

“Structuring capital transactions to be compliant with Sharia law requires current and authoritative information,” said Mazen Zein, product manager, Westlaw Business.

“Our agreement with IFSB enables us to provide their invaluable insights on Islamic Sharia law and regulations to our customers worldwide. Business law practitioners need to understand the developments and issues within the Islamic finance industry. Together, Westlaw Business and IFSB will further the availability and understanding of this information, ultimately increasing the transparency of the Islamic finance industry.”

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Breaking news from the Christian Legal Centre:

Alison Davis is seeking to challenge the House of Lords’ ruling on Debbie Purdy’s assisted suicide case today in the Supreme Court. The decision was made at the end of July and required the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, to publicise his policy on prosecuting cases of assisted suicide. It came in response to the legal challenge by Debbie Purdy, multiple sclerosis sufferer, who wished to ensure that her husband would not face prosecution for helping her to travel to Zurich to commit suicide there. The House of Lords’ decision overturned the judgments of the High Court and the Court of Appeal and required Mr Starmer “to prepare an offence-specific policy identifying the facts and circumstances which he will take into account in deciding whether or not to consent to a prosecution”.

The deadline for Alison Davis to challenge the House of Lords’ decision is today. Alison Davis’s challenge claims that Lord Phillips, senior Law Lord at the time and now President of the Supreme Court was biased in favour of assisted suicide when he and the other four Law Lords made the decision that the law on assisted suicide was “unclear” and required offence-specific guidance for prosecutors concerned with deciding whether to prosecute a suspect for assisting the suicide of another person. Miss Davis’s evidence centres on Lord Phillips’ comments in The Daily Telegraph on 10th September 2009, in which he expressed “enormous sympathy” for terminally-ill patients who want to commit suicide, but need assistance to do so.

Lord Phillips said in his interview with The Daily Telegraph: “I have enormous sympathy with anyone who finds themselves facing a quite hideous termination of their life as a result of one of these horrible diseases, in deciding they would prefer to end their life more swiftly and avoid that death as well as avoiding the pain and distress that might cause their relatives.”

Alison Davis of No Less Human will present a petition arguing that Lord Phillips’ personal sympathy invalidates the House of Lords’ last decision, in the same way that Lord Hoffman’s links to Amnesty International did when he gave a judgment in the case regarding the immunity from prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile. The legal challenge states that the Purdy ruling is “vitiated by the principle of apparent bias”, and that “the decision of the former House of Lords is ‘unconstitutional’ and usurps the powers of Parliament”. It calls for the Supreme Court to be convened “to reconsider and hear fresh argument on the case of Purdy”. The argument continues: “the expression of the private ‘political’ view of Lord Phillips in The Daily Telegraph after the judgement clearly raises a question in the minds of reasonable and informed people of apparent bias”.

Miss Davis, a wheelchair user with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, emphysema, osteoporosis and arthritis, wrote a letter to accompany her case papers. She said: “The DPP’s guidelines are unfair, unjust, and fatally discriminatory against suffering people, who deserve the same presumption in favour of life as any able bodied person would automatically receive. They have no place in a civilised society.”

Campaigners, argue that Lord Phillips’ personal sympathy for those who wanted to commit suicide means that the proposed interim prosecution policy should not be finalised. The changes made by the interim policy could make it easier for people to coerce their family members, friends or the people for whom they care into killing themselves.

The Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini QC, has already indicated that no similar guidance will be issued in Scotland, stating that “The Crown recognises the importance of this issue, but any change in the current law related to homicide is properly a matter for the Scottish Parliament.”

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.