Jonathan Mitchell QC

Albie Sachs, Justice of the South African Constitutional Court, is one of the great judges (and in one of the great courts) of our time. On 24 June he was in Edinburgh, first speaking to the first joint meeting of the four UK and Ireland Human Rights Commissions (I wasn’t there) and then at a meeting organised by the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young Persons (I was). The topic at the second talk was how the landmark decision in the case of S v M, 2007 ZACC 18, in which the South African Constitutional Court held that the rights of children had to be taken into account in criminal proceedings against their mother (in their own right and not merely as an aspect of the mother’s rights), came to be made, and its resonance for Scotland. Jackie Kemp’s already written a good account of the event as a whole, and I intend here to pick up some miscellaneous issues rather than duplicate that. Continue Reading »

On 1 July, the Tribunals Service launched a consultation as to the rules to be used for asylum and immigration cases in the Upper Tribunal when the AIT merges with it next year. There is to be no consultation on the rules for asylum and immigration cases at first instance: the Tribunals Service notes without comment “The Government has confirmed that the current Asylum and Immigration Tribunal rules will be amended to become procedure rules for the First-Tier Immigration and Asylum Chamber.”

The consultation exercise runs for twelve weeks, and views are apparently sought from “stakeholders” although goodness knows whether they have been told this. This is the full consultation paper, with proposed rules and practice statements. There are knock-on changes in the provisions for appeal to the Court of Session. Rather gallingly, Rule 18 refers to legal aid funding being “granted by the Scottish Legal Aid Board” although there is still no provision for legal aid before the Tribunal in Scottish cases.