I've been quite the fanboy for Brenda "Women are equal to everything" Hale since, as Pres of the UK Supreme Court in 2019, she put a stop to Boris Johnson's unconstitutional Brexit shenanigans . . . while wearing a Woolworth's Spider-brooch. Note also that 10 years earlier, as one of the founding cohort of UKSC justices, she had been instrumental is establishing that body as approachable, inclusive, independent, and of the people.
One of those accessibility policies had been to create the UKSC YouTube channel and populate it with 6-10 minute summaries of recent decisions. You might think that watching an elderly white bloke in a suit reading from a script [R] would be as exciting as watching 3 guppies cruising in an aquarium. It is true that there are no car-chases [although occasionally an ambulance can be heard in the background]. But I have now watched A Lot of these performances and still find them interesting and informative and only about 1,000 words long. The variety of cases which make it to the top court in the land is fabulously broad. The UKSC only agrees to deliberate on cases referred to them by the Court of Appeal IF they require an upset of established precedent or otherwise seems to have broader applicability than to the peculiar case in question.
Sometimes there is nobody in the court except the Judges, their functionaries and their cameras. Other times (Prorogation of parliament; Charlie Gard) it's standing room only.
This habit of public sharing of legal ruminations has a started a trend of lawyers, rich and poor, giving their own summaries and opinions. Some of these cases get a lot of traction; not only in legal circles but also among the chatterati and the press. Use judgment [ho ho] on approach: some of those lawyers, in contrast to the Supremos, really are boring droners. I needed to clear all of these UKSC links out of my pending tray and that means sharing with you-hoo:
- Fearn v Tate: the right not to be gawped at
- Guest v Guest: proprietary estoppel & great expectations to inherit the farm
- Patel v Mirza: yes, swindlers have rights
- despite Ex turpi causa non oritur actio
- Evergreen Marine v Nautical Challenge: who is wrong when ships collide
- Braganza v BP shipping: suicide at sea
- Herculito Maritime v Gunvor International: piracy, general average, ship-owner v cargo-owner
- Owens v Owens: alimony rates
- R v Andrewes: bigging up your CV to get a nice job
- In the matter of C: habitual residence of custody kids
- Arnold v Britton: exponential service charges in chalet park
- Montgomery v Lanark: informed consent
- This one overturns the Bolam Test idea that Doctors know a lot and patients know-nothing
- Lee v Ashers: the competing rights in gay cake
- R v Copeland: you can, so, experiment with explosives at home
- R & Worcestershire CoCo v SSHSC: where does a sectioned person live?
- R & Bourgass v Sec State Justice: solitary confinement can be unlawful
- Marouf v Home Office: UK equality laws don't run in Lebanon
- Zubaydah v Foreign Office etc.: UK law does apply in CIA rendition countries
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