Kate Leader

Call for evidence: Legislative scrutiny of the Courts and Tribunals Bill - Committees - UK Parliament The Justice Committee has issued a call for evidence to inform its scrutiny of the Courts and Tribunals Bill.

The Justice Committee has opened a call for evidence on the draft Courts and Tribunal bill limiting jury trials, extending magistrates sentencing power, removing automatic right of appeal from mags, removing D right to elect, amongst many other changes.

committees.parliament.uk/committee/10...

Thanks!

AMAZING NEWS:

UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule Protest group’s co-founder wins legal challenge against decision to proscribe it under anti-terrorism laws

Wow!

Palestine Action win judicial review - Guardian report.

This is a *big* legal win.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

High Court’s judgment finding the proscription of Palestine Action was an unjustified interference with rights to freedom of association and assembly under arts 10/11 ECHR, and inconsistent with the Home Secretary’s own policy.

www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/u...

This is tonight, Mon 9 February at 5pm GMT.

DM me for the link or come join us at Mile End.

Yes. It'd be great if it actually happened. I think it's been recommended many times in the past but has yet to come about. From my understanding I think the common platform should be recording this info so the data already exists but isn't being collected?

Part 2 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts has been published. There's a lot to take in but two positives in the recommendations to start with
i) MOJ collecting data on unrepresented defendants
ii) increasing lower and upper end of legal aid threshold:

www.gov.uk/government/p...

Call for Papers - FINAL.docx Conference Call for Papers Conspiracy Theories & Pseudolaw Queen Mary, University of London Friday 19 June 2026 Conspiracy theories have gone mainstream. What were once seen as fringe concerns are no...

Call For Papers:
Conspiracy Theories and Pseudolaw
Conference
📅 Friday 19 June 2026
📍 Lincoln's Inns Fields, Queen Mary, University of London

tinyurl.com/5bwhur6v

Please email your submission (max 300 words) to k.leader@qmul.ac.uk by 28 February 2026.

Please share.

Call for Papers - FINAL.docx Conference Call for Papers Conspiracy Theories & Pseudolaw Queen Mary, University of London Friday 19 June 2026 Conspiracy theories have gone mainstream. What were once seen as fringe concerns are no...

Call For Papers:
Conspiracy Theories and Pseudolaw
Conference
📅 Friday 19 June 2026
📍 Lincoln's Inns Fields, Queen Mary, University of London

tinyurl.com/5bwhur6v

Please email your submission (max 300 words) to k.leader@qmul.ac.uk by 28 February 2026.

Please share.

The first Criminal Justice Centre Seminar of 2026 is now live! Join Bridget Mac Eochàgain in conversation with Maks Del Mar and @juliestonepeters.bsky.social to discuss her research on representing rape on stage.

📆Monday 9 February, 5-7pm
📍QMUL School of Law
Tickets (hybrid)
tinyurl.com/2kus7s6y

Slashing jury trials could clear courts backlog within a decade, says Lammy Exclusive: Lord chancellor urges MPs to back judge-only trials in thousands of criminal cases in England and Wales

Properly funding the court system would clear the backlog even more quickly.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

UK ‘pays substantial sum’ to tortured Guantánamo Bay detainee Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah accused British intelligence services of providing questions to his CIA interrogators

Amongst all the other news and noise today, this is significant news about complicity of the United Kingdom state’s complicity in torture.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Haha, Homesense is an absolute treasure trove.

Chanukah Sameach from Sydney Jason. A much needed message today.

That's a nice hannukiah

Chag Sameach!

Police forces in England and Wales to get units that tackle violence against women Specialist teams will deal with offences such as rape and stalking as part of VAWG strategy, home secretary says

Sounds great, until you read this bit:

"The Guardian understands there will be no additional funding for these units, so forces will have to absorb the costs from existing budgets".

Gov will do literally anything except actually fund the justice system.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

David Lammy expected to water down plans to scrap most jury trials Justice secretary suggests he will stick to Leveson’s recommended three-year sentence threshold in England and Wales, after ‘cabinet feedback’

In all the jury kerfuffle what isn't being discussed and should be is magistrates. The mixed bench proposed by Leveson to replace juries has been quietly dropped in favour of a single judge. And mags sentencing powers are going up again to 18 months (+up to 2 yrs) www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

David Lammy’s proposals for judge-only trials would make England and Wales an outlier | Institute for Government Most countries don’t use jury trials, but few rely on a single judge to pass both verdict and sentence

My latest on the gov's proposal to all-but abolish jury trials: a radical move that would leave us out-of-step with most democracies and increase the risk of miscarriages of justice. 🧵
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/david-lammy-...

Here is a list of reasons why some of my hearings and trials this year have been delayed and kicked off into the long grass, stuck in our record court backlog. Serious allegations which will now be tried *years* after the event. 🧵👇

This is exactly right. Juries are being sacrificed to political expediency in the absence of any evidence that such a change is needed or wanted. (And just to add I do not think lawyers finding juries annoying qualifies as a good reason to scrap them).

Pensioner with dementia convicted over unpaid TV Licence bill Ailing pensioners, people with mental health struggles, grieving families and children have all been caught up in the Single Justice Procedure scandal

A pensioner with dementia gets a criminal conviction over an unpaid TV Licence

This one is pretty heartbreaking

The #SingleJusticeProcedure is broken

www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/p...

As we are again on the verge of losing juries it's timely, as @joshuarozenberg.bsky.social reports, that we can now access Michael Zander & Paul Henderson's study of the Crown Court from 1993 showing strong support for juries and positive feedback from jurors tinyurl.com/59sza7yf (p223 onwards)

‘If asylum is framed as illegality, and settlement is reshaped into a privilege that must be endlessly earned, then our understanding of equal membership – the idea that those lawfully in the UK should enjoy stability and a clear path to full inclusion – is fundamentally altered.’

Quite the correction by the Telegraph. The publication in question is @freemovement.bsky.social

MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog

Big news today with the government confirming it's moving ahead with Leveson proposals on removing right for D to elect trial by jury www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...

MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog

Big news today with the government confirming it's moving ahead with Leveson proposals on removing right for D to elect trial by jury www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...

Asylum seekers’ jewellery could be seized to pay for processing costs, says Home Office minister Idea borrowed from Denmark is latest attempt to reduce number of people seeking asylum in UK

We are one step away from seizing gold teeth.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Money! I moved abroad and was ineligible for any postdoc funding as a non European but could get PhD funding. But I think it differs depending on disciplines. I have a friend who had a PhD in pharmacology and did another in law