Legal highlights: the law stories you may have missed in 2015

Being forced to read incessantly means law students get stuck in a bubble. It’s difficult to appreciate what’s happening outside the library, so many rely on lecturers to keep them up-to-date with happenings in the legal world, and that inevitably leads to omissions.

So, as a quick catch-up, here’s a selection of the most interesting legal stories that hit the headlines in 2015.

The changing legal industry

Lectures cover how the contents of the law change, but this is rarely mirrored in respect to the evolution of the legal industry. Accordingly, law students may have missed a report from February proposing the introduction of online courts to resolve claims of up to £25,000, which could significantly impact civil litigation proceedings.

Interestingly for many aspiring solicitors, the graduate recruitment techniques of several major firms have changed too. In December, the total number of City firms now signed up to a contextual graduate recruitment method rose to 13, potentially heralding much-needed improvement in the social diversity of trainees.

Elsewhere, there were mergers aplenty with the world’s biggest firm Dentons managing seven in 2015. In November, Irwin Mitchell and Thomas Eggar combined to create a new UK-wide legal behemoth.

The judiciary

Attitudes towards women in the legal profession entered the public conscience via two notable events. Barrister Charlotte Proudman’s revelations in September of inappropriate comments by a fellow lawyer on Linkedin, combined with Lord Sumption and Lady Hale’s dispute over diversity within the judiciary, raised questions about gender bias within the law.

Judges came: October saw the first Asian female judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb QC join the Queen’s bench division. And judges went: four were fired for watching pornography at work in March. A magistrate resigned after being suspended by the authorities for helping to pay a destitute asylum seeker’s court fine in September, and in July, Justice Peter Smith was removed from a case involving British Airways after raising the matter of his own lost luggage 33 times.

Celebrities

Famous people, as we recently instructed judges, are people too and they can get involved in court cases just like everybody else.

Musicians had a successful 2015: Rihanna won a trademark case against Topshop in January, pianist James Rhodes revived an obscure piece of Victorian case law to ensure his autobiography could be published, and One Direction’s Niall Horan won a drug-related libel case against the Daily Star.

Royalty had a mixed year. The country was rocked by sex-related claims against Prince Andrew in January, and May’s release of Prince Charles’ ‘black spider memos’ – alongside raising some fascinating constitutional law issues – shed light on his advocacy correspondence with ministers.

Football flirted with the courts, too – former club doctor Eva Carneiro sued Chelsea for constructive dismissal in October, while Ched Evans’ case was referred to the court of appeal – as did politicians. A saga rumbled on throughout the early months of 2015 concerning Lord Janner’s fitness to face sexual abuse charges. The seat of the last Liberal Democrat MP in Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, was ruled to be safe despite his dishonesty during the election campaign, and Donald Trump’s objections to a wind farm near his golf course were resoundingly rejected by the supreme court.

Human rights and the rule of law

As disputes over the continued existence of the Human Rights Act 1998 persisted throughout the year, justice was still upheld and preserved by the courts and the executive in many respects.

The controversial Tory benefits cap was held to be unlawful and discriminatory, while Michael Gove decided to scrap the criminal courts charge. Employees were given new rights in March by the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and a precedent set down in September will help to tackle caste discrimination in the workplace.

In family law, ex-wives are now allowed to claim more from their ex-husbands following dishonesty or fraud concerning financial assets, while in February, an ex-EDL-supporting father had his child returned on the grounds that his political beliefs should not have been taken into account by the council.

October was monumental for justice and liberty, as well as for Shaker Aamer, when the long-term Guantanamo Bay resident finally landed back in the UK after his 14-year incarceration. Meanwhile, the long-term durability of a high court decision on the compatibility of Northern Ireland’s blanket ban on abortion with human rights legislation remains to be seen.

For progressives, however, problems still persist. Proposals for a bill legalising assisted suicide were rejected in the Commons, while the concepts of civil liberty and privacy were undermined by the investigatory powers bill in November, and revelations of GCHQ spying on Amnesty International surfaced in July.

Around the world

Legal stories abroad hit the headlines, too. Gay rights activists celebrated around the world, as the US supreme court extended marriage equality to all 50 states in June, just after it had ensured the survival of Obamacare.

South Africa threatened to withdraw from the international criminal court, while one of its greatest sporting stars Oscar Pistorius was convicted of murder following the prosecution’s appeals. In Italy, Amanda Knox was acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher in September.

Bosnian courts issued a landmark ruling in June granting the first ever compensation to a wartime rape victim during the 1990s conflict, while Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the Russian constitutional court to give the country’s constitution priority over international human rights rulings.

Weird and wonderful

2015 showed that the courts can be called upon to decide anything and everything. In October, the high court was asked to decide whether bridge should be considered a sport, and in September, the German courts ended a trademark dispute over whether chocolate company Lindt’s foil-wrapped teddy was a copy of Haribo’s sweets.

In March, the Irish court of appeal provoked worldwide amusement by inadvertently legalising drugs such as ecstasy for a day. 2016 has a lot to live up to.

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