Law According To A King

"Two students currently studying A-Levels, having just finished the first year, aspiring to do Law at university with interests in both criminal law and commercial law." The past year has seen the rise of intense demonstrations all around the world ultimately named as part of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Regarded as the spark of these protests, on the 25th of May 2020 Minneapolis Police Department detained George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man accused of buying cigarettes with a ‘counterfeit’ $20 bill. Derek Chauvin, one of the police officers who was tasked with detaining Floyd, kept his knee on his neck for around nine minutes resulting in unconsciousness and ultimately the death of George Floyd. On April 20th 2021 Mr. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The case was heavily publicised with a lot of media coverage and many agreed Derek Chauvin received a fair trial yet some argue, due to the ...

The debate as to how far the office of the Prime Minister has evolved to become more like that of a President is a hot one in political and constitutional theory, but it does have some practical ramifications for the way we think about our leaders. This post shall take a look at the arguments for and against the 'presidentialisation' of the prime minister, and examine the consequences for either side.  Firstly, it is widely accepted that the executive office of the PM has grown in recent decades. In 1970, the cabinet office had just 600 staff, but under Tony Blair, that number grew to over 2,500. As a comparison, the executive office of the President has around 4,000 - though most scholars agree this growth can be attributed to the expansion of the administrative state since the end of WWII. Better, Dowding argues, to look at the role of the executive office. Dowding says the role of staffers in the PM's office is largely based around coordination across government, and the...

 'Cancel culture', defined as a form of ostracism in which someone is forced out of social or professional circles - either online, in real life, or both - as the result of doing something that is considered objectionable or offensive, is becoming more and more relevant, particularly in the age of Trump, #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter. It is derided by those on all sides of the political spectrum as stifling discourse and freedom of speech, while its proponents argue that 'cancelling' someone is merely the consequence of their wrongful behaviour. This poses an important legal question, particularly when the courts routinely protect freedom of speech, arguing that "freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having." But, similarly, the courts have also imposed constraints on the freedom of speech - indeed, it has long been accepted one cannot yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre and expect to face no consequences if there was no fire. This blog post s...

"We were fighting and it was for our lives," said Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, of the moment when police stormed the Stonewall Inn on June 28th, 1969, and with these nine short words, she summed up the long history of the struggle for queer legal liberation. This blog post will take us through how the UK, and the world, moved from the medieval criminalisation of homosexuality to the current state of legislated equality, and a look towards the future of the next steps in the story of LGBTQ+ rights.  The first time in law that male homosexuality was targeted for persecution in the UK came under the Tudor monarch Henry VIII, whose Buggery Act of 1533 outlawed sodomy in England with the penalty of death. The preamble to the Act cited the absence of "sufficient and condign punishment" in law to deal with the "detestable and abominable vice" of homosexuality as the core reason for the bill's passage, though modern scholars, including Johnson and Lafitte, attrib...

 Impeachment is the process by which the House of Representatives votes by a majority to level charges against a federal official, in this case, the President. These charges are then brought to the Senate, where the 100 senators hold a trial, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and vote on whether to convict. A 2/3 majority of 67 votes is required to convict, and a conviction will remove the official from office. There are a number of Constitutional sources detailing the impeachment process: Article 1, section 2, clause 5  "The House of Representatives shall ... have the sole Power of Impeachment" Article 1, section 3, clauses 6 and 7  "The Senate shall have the sole power to try all Impeachments... [N]o person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office."  Article 2, section 2  The President [shall have Power to grant R...

In the United Kingdom, our judiciary is completely unelected, sparking accusations of cronyism, a lack of democratic legitimacy, and corruption, but when compared to countries and regions where the courts are elected, the UK's system stands out as a remarkably well-oiled machine. In the US, however, judges are more commonly elected at the state and local level (the federal judiciary remains wholly appointed), and the US is, unsurprisingly, seen across the world as a dysfunctional political system - leading to the characterisation of US-style democracy as "America's deadliest export" by the American journalist and author William Blum. But what impact does the election of judges have on the integrity of the judiciary, and does it actually hurt democracy as much as we might think? Politicisation of the judiciary The main argument in favour of an appointed bench is that it holds back the growing tide of politicisation. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that appointed ...

"You've chosen to be the president's lawyer," declared Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono to Bill Barr in the Senate Judiciary Committee when the Attorney General testified on his handling of the Mueller Report. Since his appointment in 2019 after the firing of Jeff Sessions, Barr has led the US Department of Justice and acted as the nation's top law enforcement official for his second time, after a two-year tenure under George H W Bush. His expansive view of executive powers and his apparent partisan actions have drawn a great deal of criticism, particularly in his last congressional hearing two days ago on the current unrest across the US following the murder of George Floyd earlier in the year. Barr's direction to federal officers to use chemical weapons, including tear gas and pepper bombs, and violent tactics against protestors, most infamously to move demonstrators away from Lafayette Park to allow for the President's photo op, drew particular ire from Rep....