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 ...

"Hi! My names Lexi and I live in Cornwall. I'm just about to go into my second year of college, where I study Law, History and Psychology. After I finish my A Levels I hope to go to Bristol University to study Law" The general public had little access to the lives of celebrities prior to the digital age. People were rarely carried away by the escapism of celebrity scandals. However, technological advancements have resulted in daily headlines on dating rumours to what celebrities eat for breakfast. As a result, public curiosity about celebrities has increased and so has the invasion of privacy.   The Law and Privacy  Currently, in the United Kingdom, the media aren’t subject to any regulations over their content, though of course they can still be prosecution for spreading hate speech. For example, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 makes it an offence to stir up religious hatred, whilst the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 makes it an offence to incite hatr...

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...

This year has been particularly challenging for us all. COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, an environmental crisis, an economic recession, and growing uncertainty throughout the world of politics. Unity is increasingly a hopeless concept, but in politics, unity is rarely apparent, nor desirable.  In Prime Minister's Questions on June 3rd , Boris Johnson attacked the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, for his criticism of the government's approach to tackling coronavirus. Johnson accused Starmer of undermining trust in the government through his questions regarding the failures of the track-and-trace system, but was the Leader of the Opposition seeking to undermine and discredit the government, or was he seeking to hold the government to account? It is taken for granted in a democracy that leaders disagree, and not always is this disagreement responsible or constructive - indeed, David Cameron was a frequent critic of the "Punch and Judy" politics of P...

Social media is hard to categorise into being merely a public service or a private institution. It's immense strength and popularity rival that of the largest governments, and it is increasingly used by those governments as a platform for carrying out the country's business, particularly in the age of Trump and Twitter. However, they are still capitalist, profit-focused organisations, that write their own rules and control their own algorithms. Outside of public pressure, there is no requirement for them to act in the best interest of their users, or indeed democracy.  But this has opened up social media to a whole host of criticisms, as well as the wider world of 'big tech', culminating in plans proposed by former US presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to break up social media companies, and an executive order by Donald Trump to ban the use of TikTok, a popular video-sharing app, in the US unless it is sold to an American company. Social m...

First of all, I have never studied intellectual property law, particularly US intellectual property law, and so I have dealt with this from a broad perspective as if it was set in the UK. Anyway, here goes... If you haven't heard of the Taylor Swift drama with Scooter Braun - get up to date on pop culture. Swift signed a contract with Big Machine Records in 2004 at the age of 15 for, presumably, 6 records before the contract could be renewed. She left BMR after her sixth album, reputation, and signed with a new record company to release her seventh album, Lover. BMR retain ownership of her masters, and the company has since been sold to Scooter Braun, who isn't exactly Swift's friend, and Swift has publicly denounced Braun and his business ethics and behaviour, and tried to get her masters back. This issue has a few legal implications in contract and intellectual property, and these will be dealt with in turn. What are Taylor Swift's options? Contract Swift sign...