Law Weblog

Will the boys at the back please pay attention?

Politicians are rounding on the judiciary and suggesting that the judges are responsible for the perceived debacle of the airplane hijackers.
The politicians might care to remember that in 1999 in R v Abdul-Hussain (Mustafa Shakir) [1999] CA the judges said that for the fourth time in five years the Court of Appeal emphasised the urgent need for legislation to define the defence of duress with precision. The law had evolved on a case by case basis and the scope of the defence was uncertain.
Simple arithmetic shows that the politicians have been warned time and time again for over 10 years.