{"id":1594,"date":"2018-02-03T08:35:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T08:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2018-02-03T08:36:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T08:36:40","slug":"toothless-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/2018\/02\/03\/toothless-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"British Justice: Toothless Rules and Marking Your Own Homework"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"British<\/a>The British legal system is portrayed by many as a bastion of truth and justice. Unfortunately, that perception doesn’t reflect the reality others experience. Perhaps the most obvious recent example of injustice in the UK is Hillsborough: it took twenty seven years for the families of those who had been unlawfully killed to finally be vindicated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After a lifetime of tenacity, justice prevailed. Is this what victims have to go through to get justice? Does it mean that if one lacks Herculean persistence, justice will be denied? Of course most of the time, justice appears to have been done, but do a brief search on\u00a0<\/span>social media and you\u2019ll find many people who feel cheated by a system they thought would protect them, not victimise them.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Toothless Rules Undermine Justice<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\"<\/a>

James Turner QC<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

There are supposed to be mechanisms in place to protect people from injustice, and as James Turner QC, a British barrister who claims to be \u201cfighting injustice wherever it raises its ugly head!\u201d<\/i>\u00a0said on twitter<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the barrister \u201cknows\u201d (as opposed to suspects) that it\u2019s a lie it would be serious professional misconduct to put it as a positive case.<\/i>“<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ANM<\/a>That\u2019s where the Bar Standards Board (BSB) should come into its own. This is an organisation designed to regulate barristers (those lawyers who argue the case in court). The BSB handbook states<\/a> categorically that barristers must not deceive the court by making assertions \u201cwhich you know, or are instructed, are untrue or misleading\u201d. <\/i>It also states \u201cyou must not call witnesses to give evidence or put affidavits or witness statements to the court which you know, or are instructed, are untrue or misleading\u201d.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet on enquiring to the BSB\u2019s Professional Conduct Department\u2019s Assessment Team regarding incontrovertible evidence of a barrister lying in court, we were told they \u201ccannot require a barrister to provide any compensation, reduce fees, apologise, or provide any other kind of redress.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

What is the point of brandishing such lofty rules, if the BSB can\u2019t even get a barrister to just apologise for deceiving the court and hence perverting the course of justice?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Marking Your Own Homework<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"ANM<\/a>Another protection from corruption and injustice should be the actual judges. Due to Legal Aid being slashed, courts are witnessing a marked increase of parties representing themselves. Some in the profession are concerned that this rise in \u201clitigants in person\u201d (LiPs) will lead to an increase in accusations of judicial bias: likely to arise from LiP’s inexperience in legal proceedings, and undoubtedly some such accusations must be accounted for by this<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"LJ<\/a>

LJ Simon, adept at marking one’s own homework<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

However, how many are aware that should a judge be accused of bias, the only person who gets to decide if this is actually the case is… that very judge? An example is Lord Justice Simon’s response<\/a> to a recusal request. He ignored a breached court order, and obviously tampered evidence<\/a>. He argued that an admission of lying in private was the same as going on the stand and denying having lied. Yet,\u00a0\u201cI have considered the applicants\u2019 further submission of 14 November 2016 that I should recuse myself on the grounds of bias. […] The submission is, in any event, without merit.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ANM<\/a>

Nicholas Wilson, HSBC Whistleblower<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

These are merely two examples, but they clearly illustrate a British justice system that may not be as independent, unbiased and uncorrupted as we are led to believe. It may however corroborate Nicholas Wilson<\/a>, the man who blew the whistle on the HSBC corruption scandal, who stated \u201cBritain is the most corrupt country in the world\u201d.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The British legal system is portrayed by many as a bastion of truth and justice. Unfortunately, that perception doesn’t reflect the reality others experience. Perhaps the most obvious recent example of injustice in the UK is Hillsborough: it took twenty seven years for the families of those who had been unlawfully killed to finally be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,184],"tags":[301,297,302,2,299,300,38,303,304,305,298,306],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics","category-opinion","tag-bar-standards-board","tag-british","tag-bsb","tag-featured","tag-hillsborough","tag-james-turner-qc","tag-justice","tag-lip","tag-lord-justice-simon","tag-nicholas-wilson","tag-royal-courts-of-justice","tag-toothless"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}