{"id":1186,"date":"2009-10-20T22:04:44","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T21:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2009-10-20T22:09:04","modified_gmt":"2009-10-20T21:09:04","slug":"major-constitutional-statements-by-lord-chief-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1186","title":{"rendered":"Major constitutional statements by Lord Chief Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"img alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1187\" style=\"width:150px;\">\r\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/judge_igor_judge-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Lord Chief Justice, Iigor Judge\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>\r\n\t<div>Lord Chief Justice, Igor Judge<\/div>\r\n<\/div>First, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge today restated the centuries old &#8216;fundamental principle&#8217; that the courts should not try to interfere with what MPs do and say. He went on to say that it was not constitutionally proper for a court to make an order that has that effect.<\/p>\n<p>The warnings followed the injunction obtained by an oil company Trafigura, which effectively suppressed a question asked in Parliament by  Labour MP Paul Farrelly.<\/p>\n<p>Second, he called for Parliament to pass new libel laws to reverse the effect of restrictive rulings by British courts which have made London the libel capital of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Several American states including California have passed laws which mean local citizens do not have to obey libel judgements laid down in British courts.<\/p>\n<p>The governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger objected when a British judge ordered all copies of a book about a Saudi oil sheikh&#8217;s alleged support for terrorism to be pulped, even though the had never been published in Britain.<\/p>\n<p>Third, Lord Judge warned against any attempt to restrict the prosecution of criminals because of the cost of a trial, which has been proposed by the Director of Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC.<\/p>\n<p>Lord Judge said: \u201cI am perfectly happy with the idea that for very minor infringements of the criminal law by an individual of good character, a warning or a caution is a perfectly sensible way of dealing with it.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWhat I am not happy about is out-of-court disposals for things said to be very minor which are not in fact very minor. I am not in favour of out-of-court disposals for infringements of the criminal law by people who have committed infringements before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lord Chief Justice, Igor Judge First, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge today restated the centuries old &#8216;fundamental principle&#8217; that the courts should not try to interfere with what MPs do and say. He went on to say that it was not constitutionally proper for a court to make an order that has that effect. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}