Last week the New Statesman carried an article entitled ‘The Slapp trap: As media lawyers battle to keep Britain’s libel industry lucrative, hopes for reform are fading.’ It claims that Britain needs tougher anti-SLAPP laws. The article contains numerous errors and omissions, some more serious than others. Continue reading
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Beyond the specific issue of speech which may (or may not) be protected under Article 10 read in its entirety lies a wider problem, and that is that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, particularly as interpreted and enforced by the OfS, may operate as a kind of reverse Section 28. This was a highly controversial clause in the Local Government Act 1988 which prohibited local authorities and state schools from “promoting homosexuality” or teaching the acceptability of same-sex relationships as a “pretended family relationship”. Continue reading
The Easter legal term ended on Friday 22 May 2026. The last term of the legal year, the Trinity Term, will begin on Tuesday 2 June 2026 and end on Friday 31 July 2026. Continue reading
Critics of the three-step process laid out in RA24 argue that the proportionality test needs to inform each step and not just the final one. Such critics include Wonkhe, Professor Naomi-Waltham Smith of Oxford University and James Murray, legal director at Doyle Clayton solicitors. In order to illustrate why this is necessary in order to comply fully with the HRA they draw on a recent case occasioned by the Austrian drag artist Conchita Wurst winning the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Continue reading
Given the manner in which the OfS conceived of and carried out its duties in relation to Sussex’s conditions of registration (E1), it is perhaps unsurprising that it reached the Final Decision that it did. However, this does not augur well for how it is going to conceive of and carry out its duties under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Continue reading
The notion of freedom of speech within the law played a key role in this case, and in her judgment Lieven J observed that “there is an immediate question as to what ‘freedom of speech within the law’ means and how it relates to the need to undertake a proportionality balance within Article 10 of the ECHR, in order to comply with s.6 of the Human Rights Act 1998” (200). The latter states that “it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right”. Continue reading
Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world. It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments in the field. Continue reading
In March 2025, the Office for Students (OfS) fined the University of Sussex £585,000, the highest amount ever levied by the regulator. This was largely because after a three-and-a-half-year investigation, which the University’s vice-chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil described as “Kafkaesque”, the OfS had decreed that the University’s Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement (hereafter the Policy Statement), which sought to protect the rights of trans and non-binary people in the University, breached the institution’s regulatory requirement to uphold freedom of speech and protect academic freedom. Continue reading
In quick succession, two articles have been published, one by Simon Lock for the Bureau of Investigative Journalists, the other by Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy in the New Statesman, suggesting that the Society for Media Lawyers (the “SML”) is sinister and powerful organisation, singly responsible for stymying further legislation relating to SLAPPs. Continue reading
In April 2026, the Divisional Court handed down its judgment in R (Thompson and Carlo) v The Commissioner of Police of The Metropolis [2026] EWHC 915 (Admin), the second major judicial challenge to the use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) by law enforcement in England and Wales. Continue reading
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