tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54022114166184183632012-01-19T07:27:09.764ZMy thoughts on Human Rights, Civil Liberties and Terrorism.Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-86927592054199017762012-01-19T07:26:00.000Z2012-01-19T07:27:09.774Z

All flourishing Christian organisations need to steer a careful course between mammon and morality. On the one hand there is the wealth, power and influence that flow out of such success, especially if it is millennia old (as with the Roman Catholic church) or backed by the state (as with Anglicanism): how can one bite the hand that feeds one if the food is so good and one’s corpulent body now

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-9358077921271728472012-01-18T07:29:00.001Z2012-01-18T07:33:14.374Z

First Article 3.In the Abu Qatada case the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that he is not likely to be tortured or ‘ill-treated’ in Jordan if he is returned there to face the authorities. Now this is, ultimately, a question of judgment for the court, based on an assessment of probability on the current facts. It could theoretically arise in a case involving Sweden or Norway just as

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-11075535815011367852012-01-11T06:35:00.003Z2012-01-19T07:25:30.273Z

All flourishing Christian organisations need to steer a careful course between mammon and morality. On the one hand there is the wealth, power and influence that flow out of such success, especially if it is millennia old (as with the Roman Catholic church) or backed by the state (as with Anglicanism): how can one bite the hand that feeds one if the food is so good and one’s corpulent body now

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-47532464589928047602012-01-09T09:11:00.002Z2012-01-09T09:59:17.486Z

Surprise – or no surprise at all? The European Court of Human Rights has decided not to precipitate a crisis of authority between itself and the UK Supreme Court. In the long awaited Grand Chamber decision of Al-Khawaja and Tahery v United Kingdom, decided shortly before Christmas (15 December 2011), the challenge was to UK hearsay law, a law which in certain circumstances allows statements to be

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-69435322535802388152012-01-05T12:59:00.001Z2012-01-05T13:02:00.995Z

Kathryn Sikkink The Justice Cascade - Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (W W Norton and Co, 2011)At LSE a few years ago I listened as the then great guru of the international criminal court Richard Goldstone outlined his case for what the author of this stimulating book calls here (only slightly misleadingly) ‘human rights prosecutions’. At the vague level of rhetoric the

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-9109405949249264042011-12-15T18:50:00.002Z2011-12-15T18:57:21.497Z

Well there you are: the European Court of Human Rights has decided not to precipitate a crisis of authority between itself and the UK Supreme Court after all. In today’s Grand Chamber decision in AL-KHAWAJA and TAHERY v. THE UNITED KINGDOM, the challenge was to UK hearsay law, a law which in certain circumstances allows statements to be admitted in evidence and to play a sole or decisive role in

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-15279848980470305682011-11-23T07:58:00.002Z2011-11-23T08:02:52.052Z

The cat is well and truly out of the bag now.The Foreign Secretary has announced the government’s priorities for its chairmanship of the Council of Europe. ‘Chairmanship of the Council of Europe,’ I hear you say - what exactly is that? Exactly. This once obscure outpost of regional largesse (the UK follows Ukraine and is followed by Albania) has suddenly become the lynch-pin of Britain’s effort

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-4259957345364560352011-10-20T17:23:00.002+01:002011-10-20T17:27:38.061+01:00

So the encampment at Dale Farm has been broken up. The travellers and protestors have left. The final throw of the litigious dice has failed, and the expulsion has been achieved. How did the judicial route, once seemingly so endlessly promising, ultimately turn into a cul-de-sac? The details of what was to be done by way of implementation of the enforcement notices (entitling the Council to act

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-68244215774993485882011-10-04T06:41:00.002+01:002011-10-04T06:44:58.098+01:00

THE TORIES, THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT AND THE MAKING OF POLITICAL NOISENothing quite marks the decline of the power of British government more powerfully than the performance of the country’s political leaders during the conference season. In truth Mr Cameron and his colleagues can do next to nothing to affect the country’s current situation, hemmed in as they are not only by their own commitment to

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-69007853991091390792011-09-28T15:23:00.002+01:002011-09-28T15:28:30.056+01:00

The attempt to remove travellers from Dale Farm in Essex has been the subject of a series of complicated legal actions, some of which are ongoing. Here is a snapshot of the current state of play.In the 1990s Dale Farm was owned by a Mr Roy Bocking. Even then it wasn’t a farm - more a scrap-yard made up of a hard surface used for storing cars. The property is within the Green Belt and as early

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-6859053965994711252011-09-11T11:33:00.004+01:002011-09-11T11:44:47.514+01:00

A TALE OF TWO SPOILT KIDSOn this day ten years ago, 11 September 2001, we were not to know that the perpetrators of the attacks on New York and Washington had played their best card right at the start of their game. Nothing illustrates the weakness of terrorism more clearly than do the hijackings of that day: spectacular, attention-grabbing, grandly cruel – but from any kind of strategic point

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-56747483748858501932011-08-21T12:00:00.002+01:002011-08-21T12:07:46.368+01:00

The Human Rights Act has become for David Cameron what the fox-hunting ban was for Tony Blair: when in a spot of bother with your own support, wheel out something bound to please them. In his article in the Sunday Express today the prime minister is quite right to note that “[t]here are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time: a decline in responsibility, a rise in

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-2580256758676730732011-08-17T16:59:00.007+01:002011-08-18T07:39:00.309+01:00

I first encountered David Starkey in the late 1980s. We were debating freedom and civil liberties together in a BBC2 programme chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby. It was the first time I had ever been on TV as I recall, but even then my opponent seemed to be a seasoned media performer, holding forth to all and sundry before the show, assuming (as he always seems to) that everybody would want to hear

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-66248499090666129412010-08-16T07:21:00.001+01:002010-08-16T07:23:08.445+01:00

I am launching a new book on the web, on 6 October 2010. The idea is to write regularly about freedom and human rights, inviting comments on the work as I go along. Then when I have all the comments in the material will be revised and published as a book early next year (2011) at LSE's third annual literary festival. More details to follow. What do you make of the idea?

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-72436939831264171632009-06-01T06:58:00.003+01:002009-06-01T18:18:19.653+01:00

There was a dispiriting moment in the Q and A session after Professor William Twining's excellent address to the Society of Legal Scholars last Thursday, on the need to foster the public understanding of law. An academic colleague described how the business of writing his academic treatise meant he had little time for other, non university stuff, dealing with the media for example, or making

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-54485733734844244682009-01-14T09:40:00.000Z2009-01-14T09:41:27.935Z

Israel’s attack on Gaza is its consolation prize for not being allowed bomb Iran: like a school bully denied the chance to attack another Form, it has picked on some small kids in the playground so as to satiate its anger. Is there any way that, out of the suffering of the inhabitants of Gaza, something positive can be forged? The key is President Obama, the new head teacher at whom the bully’s

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-8376285340678531842008-10-01T18:08:00.002+01:002008-10-01T18:13:12.496+01:00

The great good fortune is that these events have taken place before not after the US presidential election: had this happened in March 2009, and had Obama won a tight contest he would have been powerless for a disjointed four years. Now, instead, not only is he more likely to win (if only because, in the welter of real news the Republicans have been unable to mount their usual campaign of

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-8323084809728321002007-11-07T08:58:00.000Z2007-11-07T08:59:59.346Z

I have not liked the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair since one of my students of many years ago – a police officer who received the George Medal for bravery in confronting an IRA gang in London in 1975 – felt compelled publicly to contradict the Commissioner’s account of his (allegedly central) role during the same incident. If Sir Ian could be so casual about the truth in

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-8062188235624831722007-10-15T16:15:00.000+01:002007-10-15T16:27:25.799+01:00

If Ireland were ever to spend some of its recently acquired vast fortune on a ‘Museum of National Treasures’, Roy Foster should be asked to open it. This occasionally angry, sometimes whimsical and frequently hilarious account of the Republic of Ireland’s ascent from gombeen-land to the happiest place on earth (according to the Economist in 2004: ‘Gratifyingly for many Irish people, the UK

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-39079908570319893422007-10-04T11:04:00.000+01:002007-10-04T11:27:18.337+01:00

The President of Rwanda Paul Kagame is my my first guest at LSE this term. His schedule includes an address to the centre on development, climate change and human rights. There has been some controversy around the visit. Some people are critical saying he has committed human rights violations. Why have I invited him to speak at my centre?The first point to note is that the President has been

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-73020727871835007192007-09-19T14:58:00.000+01:002007-09-19T15:12:09.764+01:00

The question seems absurd until you realise that it is an ill-conceived way of putting a deeper point that is harder to refute: what makes human beings so special that they – and they alone among the animals – warrant the protection that flows from being entitled to rights? The usual stock answers to this are not as satisfactory as maybe once they were. First we used to say that humans as

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402211416618418363.post-53305156471520343272007-09-10T10:20:00.000+01:002007-09-10T10:49:28.251+01:00

I wrote an article in the Guardian on Friday arguing that libertarianism and political liberty needed to be kept separate in our minds, and that civil libertarians should be prepared to engage more in discussion than they do about the relative merits of various suggestions for change that affect the first while being extremely careful about any new laws or practices that threaten the second.  The

Conor Geartyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03625067815990973161noreply@blogger.com3