The High Court has dismissed a claim for judicial review brought by a Sri Lankan Tamil detained on the island of Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory.Last November, the home secretary allowed 61 other shipwrecked Tamil asylum seekers “leave outside the rules” to enter the UK. The unnamed claimant was refused entry…

What is a private prosecution? Sir Theobald Mathew, director of public prosecutions from 1944 to 1964, was fond of saying that his title was a misnomer because he directed nobody and there were no public prosecutions.The point he was making was that all prosecutions were private prosecutions, whether brought by the police or by anybody…

Pre-sentence reports are not an indication of the sentence to be passed on an offender, the chair of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales said on Wednesday evening. In a statement issued after the council’s latest guideline on community and custodial sentences had been criticised in parliament, Sir William Davis explained that reports from…

Lawyers are sometimes failing to meet the ethical standards expected of them, according to the Legal Services Board. The oversight body that regulates the legal regulators in England and Wales is launching a consultation today on upholding professional ethical duties. This sets out five “outcomes” that regulators would have to implement so that…

A coroner who refused to publish the findings of an inquest has reversed his position after a challenge by the media.Crispin Butler, HM Senior Coroner for Buckinghamshire, announced last October that the inquest into the death of Graham Robert Whelan, 38, who died last year at his home in Wendover, would be “completed in writing”…

The Law Commission has responded to concerns raised by national policing organisations and the government that the riots in Southport last summer might have been quelled if the police had been able to release more information about Axel Rudakubana, who was subsequently convicted of the murders of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance…

A former senior judge has called for the creation of an Oxford centre that would sustain and enhance the rule of law.Sir Ernest Ryder was a lord justice of appeal in England and Wales from 2013 and senior president of tribunals for the United Kingdom from 2015. He retired from the judiciary in 2020 to…