Leon Glenister recently worked on a Court of Protection case concerning the inherent jurisdiction of the Court over an adult with capacity Until the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (‘MCA’), the Court used its inherent jurisdiction to make decisions on behalf of mentally incapacitated individuals. The MCA was enacted to provide a regime for the court [...]
Author Archive
April 3, 2012
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The court’s inherent jurisdiction: involvement in decisions of mentally capacitous, but vulnerable, individuals
By Leon Glenister in Court of Protection
January 18, 2012
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Question marks over the approval of breast implants
By David Lawson and Leon Glenister in MiscellaneousAuthors: David Lawson is a barrister and Public Law specialist at Hardwicke. Leon Glenister is a pupil barrister. The risks of untested and under-tested medicines are well known. The Thalidomide scandal saw 10,000 children born with disabilities, probably because the drug was not tested on pregnant women or animals. It was one of the early [...]
January 10, 2012
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Obscenity: an offence to individual autonomy
By Leon Glenister in Freedom of expression, Media lawSo the British stereotype of being prudish and conservative may not be completely true. It turns out, after the case of R v Peacock on Friday afternoon, the average British person does not deem male phisting, urination and BDSM obscene. Prosecutions for obscenity are rare, and this decision is a good time to examine the [...]
January 5, 2012
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Can one ever satisfy the assisted suicide debate?
By Leon Glenister in Legal/political philosophy, Right to privacyLeon Glenister was part of a consultation group at the University of Cambridge which responded to the DPP’s interim policy on prosecuting assisted suicide in late 2009. Today, the Commission on Assisted Dying published their report. In a well-researched and well-reasoned paper, the Commission set out a possible framework for a law that allows assisted [...]
January 4, 2012
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Challenging government cuts: library closures
By Leon Glenister in Equality, Judicial ReviewGovernment cuts have led to a flurry of judicial review actions: from challenging court closures, to challenging the restriction of eligibility criteria for care assistance, even to challenging the basis on which public sector pensions are calculated. Just before Christmas the much-publicised library closures issue hit the Court of Appeal in Bailey v Brent [2011] [...]
October 28, 2011
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European Court vs the UK: the consequences of ignoring judgments
By Leon Glenister in Human Rights Act, Right to voteIt is no secret that there has been a frosty relationship of late between the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) and the British government. Dominic Grieve this week announced his intention to go to the ECtHR to fight their decision on prisoner voting. The question arising is: what happens where the European Court disagrees [...]
October 19, 2011
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‘Blind shots at a hidden target’: reforming the Special Advocate Procedure
By Leon Glenister in Right to fair trialWhat should the court do where there is an individual who is being tried, but the prosecutor is unable to disclose the evidence against him because it would constitute a national security risk? This is an issue that most commonly occurs in cases of suspected terrorists but its scope is wider than that. Lord Hope [...]
September 28, 2011
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Capital Punishment – from idea to reality
By Leon Glenister in Death penaltyRuth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK The death penalty debate has reared its head yet again after Troy Davies was executed in Georgia last week under a cloud of controversy. This occurred just as the Government has been urged to debate the re-introduction of capital punishment by petitioners on its [...]
September 14, 2011
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Should there ever be a duty to help another in danger?
By Leon Glenister in Legal/political philosophy, MiscellaneousKingston Crown Court recently heard a mother, Nova Whiting-Willet, was beaten in front of her child on a London bus when she refused to move her pushchair. The most shocking aspect of this assault is that it occurred in front of other passengers who not only refused to intervene, but even stepped over the victim [...]
June 26, 2011
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Euthanasia: the law can’t do anything without further information
By Leon Glenister in Right to privacyLeon Glenister was part of a consultation group at the University of Cambridge which responded to the DPP’s interim policy on prosecuting assisted suicide in late 2009. Since the BBC2 documentary in which Terry Pratchett explored the topic of euthanasia, debate has taken hold over whether individuals should have the right to die. However, the [...]
