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 ...

"I'm an A-level student studying English Literature, History, and Government and Politics, currently serving as Deputy Head Girl of Herschel Grammar School, and a Co-Founder of the Herschel Law Society. I hope to study Law at university and pursue a career in the legal industry. I love to read - currently reading "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky"." The question raised about felon disenfranchisement also inevitably raises the question as to whether the prison system should be more about rehabilitation, or punishment; something which must also be considered when contemplating this predicament. Convicted persons, during the time that they are detained in a penal institution, are legally incapable of voting at any parliamentary or local government election . One presumes this to be completely preposterous because prisoners, even those who serve the average life sentence, will eventually be released into society, and will be expected to become productive citizen...

"I would consider myself a confident person who likes to socialise and spend time with their friends in their free time. However, I have a more serious side and in my spare time also like to debate current issues in the world and consider different viewpoints about these issues." In 1707, English law became one of two legal systems in different parts of the same  United Kingdom. Since then, the law is something that billions of people put their faith in daily: from trusting that people will be fined for not picking up their rubbish to trusting that  the big, bad criminals will be locked up in prison. However, devastating mistakes have made  many people in todays’ society, including me, question should we truly trust the legal system  that we have relied on for many years? If I say the names Derek Bentley and Elijah McClain  you may not recognise them. But that is where the problem lies, these two innocent people  deserve to be talked about more and how the ...

Modern international law finds its basis in the ruins of the global order following WWII, when the major superpowers of the USA and the Soviet Union were allied against Nazi Germany, and human rights were at the top of the agenda. At the Moscow Conference in 1943, the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union discussed the end of the war and spoke to the importance of establishing "at the earliest practicable date a general international organisation, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States ... for the maintenance of international peace and security." It was this event, preceded by the London Declaration and the Atlantic Charter of 1941, that led to the creation of the United Nations at the Yalta Conference in February 1945.  The basis of international law, therefore, is the equality between all States - the notion that international law cannot be imposed on a sovereign State without its consent - and ...

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...