JUSTICE STUDENT HUMAN RIGHTS NETWORK

CONTENTS

• Welcome
• Introduction
• Briefings
• Case note
• People
• What you can do

Welcome to the JUSTICE Student Human Rights Network e-bulletin for Autumn 2008 - our seventh edition of this bulletin as we begin the third year of the network project.

This edition of the bulletin contains briefing notes on homicide law reform and on torture, a case note on a recent human rights judgment from the House of Lords and interviews with two barristers working in the field of human rights.

The bulletin concludes with a section on ways you can get involved with human rights, with JUSTICE and more widely. JUSTICE is currently advertising for three internship vacancies. We are also running an event with BPP on Saturday 15 November - for more information see below. And we would like to invite you to take part in an event - we are looking for three volunteers to debate for and against a British bill of rights at an event with JUSTICE's director Roger Smith run by the Equality and Human Rights Commission at the British Library on Sunday 7 December. For more details click here.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the JUSTICE Student Human Rights Network e-bulletin and as ever welcome your feedback - please email jshrn@justice.org.uk with any comments or questions.

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From Shaheen Rahman
Barrister and Member of JUSTICE Council
Chair of JUSTICE Student Human Rights Network project

Welcome to the first electronic bulletin of the new academic year from the JUSTICE Student Human Rights Network - we hope you had a good summer. Welcome back to those of you who have become part of the network over the past two years since we launched, and welcome to those of you who are new to us and who may be new to studying law and human rights as well. I too am new - Suzanne Lambert is currently on maternity leave and I've taken over as chair of the project while she is away.

We very much hope to continue building on the success of the past two years and will continue to publish an electronic bulletin three times a year. We are also looking forward to new events. On Saturday 15 November we will be running a morning event at BPP Law School called Human Rights in Practice: An Introduction. This will be a free morning event, aimed particularly at those who are new to human rights and who haven't been to one of our events before. For the programme and for booking information click here.

We also hope to be able to run a special event for Justice's student, pupil and trainee members in the New Year and to run a big conference in March. Full details will be added to the website and emailed to the network as soon as we confirm other events. Do make sure you are kept up to date by emailing jshrn@justice.org.uk to be added to the mailing list if you do not already directly receive these emails! Don't forget you can also read past editions of the JUSTICE Student Human Rights Network electronic bulletin at our website, as well as see details about past events and read network member's contributions on a variety of human rights issues.

Please do contact us if you have any questions or comments about the network, or if you are interested in hosting a joint event, or if you would like to make a contribution to the website. Email us at jshrn@justice.org.uk or telephone 020 7762 6422.

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Homicide law reform

Torture

Briefing: Homicide Law Reform

Why is homicide law reform topical?

The government are proposing several changes to the law of homicide in their consultation Murder, Manslaughter and Infanticide: proposals for reform of the law.[1] It is expected that these proposals, or modified versions of them, will form part of the Law Reform, Victims and Witnesses Bill, due to be published in December of this year. The new law could be in force as early as 2009.

How important are the changes?

Any amendment of the law of homicide is, naturally, important - both because homicide offences are amongst the most serious of all criminal offences, meaning that conviction will result in serious restrictions upon the liberty of the offender, and because they form part of the state's obligations to protect the right to life under Article 2 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The European Court of Human Rights has said that:

The positive obligation to take all appropriate steps to safeguard life for the purposes of Article 2 … entails above all a primary duty on the State to put in place a legislative and administrative framework designed to provide effective deterrence against threats to the right to life … [2]

In the context of domestic law, the changes are extremely important because they result from an ambitious attempt on the part of the Law Commission to create a new structure of homicide offences, replacing the traditional murder/manslaughter division for general homicide offences with a three-tier system, and amending the partial defences and rules regarding complicity.[3] The government, however, has chosen - at least for now - to go forward with only some of these changes, in modified form. JUSTICE and other commentators believe that in many ways this will worsen the existing situation and that wholesale reform is needed.[4]

What did the Law Commission propose?

In its 2006 report the Law Commission proposed a three-tier system of general homicide offences: first degree murder (which would attract the mandatory life sentence); second degree murder (with a discretionary life sentence); and manslaughter (with a discretionary life sentence). In its 2005 consultation paper, the Law Commission had provisionally proposed that 'first degree murder' should be confined to intentional killing (the clarity and coherence of which JUSTICE had supported), but in the 2006 report this was extended additionally to killing with intent to cause serious injury, coupled with an awareness of a serious risk of causing death.

The Law Commission also proposed changes to other aspects of the law of homicide, including provocation, diminished responsibility and complicity. The current law of provocation, as only recently settled in the case of Attorney-General v Holley [2005] UKPC 23, would be replaced by a partial defence of killing in response to gross provocation or to a fear of serious violence. The requirement of a loss of self-control would be removed. The partial defence of diminished responsibility would be modernised; its requirements would include an abnormality of mental functioning arising from a recognised medical condition, and/or in the case of a defendant under the age of eighteen, developmental immaturity. Importantly, both partial defences would reduce first degree murder to second degree murder within the Law Commission's structure (rather than as now, reducing murder to manslaughter). They would therefore apply to fewer cases in the first instance than the current partial defences.

What changes to the law is the government pursuing?

The government has, at least for now, elected not to proceed with reforms to the structure of homicide. However, it has taken up, in revised form, the Law Commission's proposals regarding provocation and diminished responsibility, which in its conception would as now reduce murder to manslaughter. 'Provocation' would be replaced by killing in circumstances where, amongst other conditions, the defendant must have had a fear of serious violence, or things must have been done and/or said which 'amounted to an exceptional happening' and caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged. The requirement for a loss of self-control has been reinserted, albeit that it need not be 'sudden'.

In relation to diminished responsibility, the Law Commission's proposals are largely retained. However, the 'developmental immaturity' gateway for child defendants has been removed.

The government also proposes to change to the law of complicity for homicide, but not adopting the more general proposed changes to the law of complicity proposed in the Law Commission's 2007 report Participating in Crime.[5] Other Law Commission proposals from the 2006 homicide report, such as the view that duress should become a defence to murder, and that the government should hold a public consultation on the issue of mercy killing, have sadly not yet been taken up.

What is Justice's view?

JUSTICE feels strongly that the government has failed to realise that the Law Commission's scheme for murder, manslaughter and infanticide worked as a coherent whole but that to pick and choose certain elements while rejecting other, major parts of it risks creating huge problems in the law and in practice. In particular, the partial defences of provocation and diminished responsibility in the Law Commission's scheme were supposed to reduce first degree murder to second degree murder; the mandatory life sentence applied to a far smaller number of cases in that scheme. They cannot simply, therefore, be transplanted into the context of the old murder/manslaughter distinction. Further, the alterations made to the partial defences by government have been largely for the worse: reinserting the loss of self-control requirement into provocation may mean that women victims of domestic violence (to whom the government intended to show some measure of sympathy) will still find it difficult to make out the partial defence; while losing the 'developmental immaturity' aspect of diminished responsibility for children would mean that an important opportunity to recognise the distinct situation of young children in the criminal justice system had been lost.

You can read Justice's formal response to the government's consultation here.

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Briefing: Torture in UK law

Torture is illegal, right?

Yes. The use of torture has been contrary to common law for several centuries, and the UK was well ahead of many other European jurisdictions in abolishing its use. Although the common law prohibited torture, however, the Privy Council continued to issue torture warrants until Felton's case in 1628 and it was not until the Long Parliament in 1640 that the practice was formally abolished. In Scotland, torture was prohibited by section 5 Treason Act 1708.

In addition to the established common law provisions, section 134 Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it an offence for any public official to 'intentionally inflict severe pain or suffering on another in the perfomance … of his official duties'. This provision was introduced to honour the UK's commitments under the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Torture Convention).

Under international law, torture is not only prohibited under such instruments as Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Torture Convention, but it has become recognised as ius cogens, a preemptory norm of international law that binds all states whether they have signed instruments such as the Torture Convention or not.[1] The prohibition against torture under Article 3 ECHR is also one of the few rights that cannot be derogated from in a state of emergency under Article 15.

Torture is something that only happens in other countries. Why is it a human rights issue in the UK?

For several reasons.

First, the various international instruments prohibiting torture not only make it unlawful for UK officials to commit torture but also forbid, for example, the UK sending people to countries where they face a real risk of torture. Although the government maintains that it would never return someone to a country where they face a risk of torture, the Human Rights Act 1998 is regularly relied upon in extradition and deportation cases to challenge the government's assessment of whether a risk of ill-treatment exists. Even more controversial is the UK government's negotiation of Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with countries such as Jordan and Libya, in order to deport suspects to countries where torture is known to be used. JUSTICE and Human Rights Watch are jointly intervening in the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v OO in the House of Lords at the end of October to argue that MoUs cannot safely be relied upon.

Secondly, UK cooperation with other countries in the field of counter-terrorism and the UK involvement with the 'War on Terror' has raised serious questions about whether decisions about deportations and control orders have been based partly on evidence gathered under torture in other countries, including the 'enhanced interrogation techniques' used by US officials at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.[2] This was the key issue in the famous 'Torture Evidence' case (A and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No 2)) in 2005.[3] In some cases, there have even been claims that UK officials were present during interrogations in other countries in which torture was used, most recently in the Binyam Mohammed case in the High Court in August.[4]

Thirdly, the conduct of the UK forces themselves, in particular the treatment of prisoners and the death of Baha Mousa, has highlighted defects in the guidance given to British soldiers concerning the proper treatment of detainees. Particularly striking is the apparent failure of the army to draw soldiers' attention to the 1972 army directive prohibiting the 'five techniques' that were held by the European Court of Human Rights to breach Article 3 in Ireland v UK.[5]

Fourthly, there is an issue about the jurisdiction of British courts to punish torturers and provide redress to victims. Although the Pinochet case in 1999 established that foreign heads of state could not claim immunity from prosecution, and the 2005 prosecution of an Afghan warlord in the Old Bailey showed the ability to exercise universal jurisdiction for torture in criminal cases, the doctrine of state immunity in civil cases has still prevented many victims of torture from suing foreign governments in British courts to obtain redress against their torturers.[6] A private members bill is currently before Parliament to create an exception to allow such civil actions to proceed.

Fifthly, the scope of Article 3 ECHR extends more broadly than torture of detainees. Although torture is clearly outlawed in the UK, the concept of inhuman and degrading treatment has clear relevance to how detainees are treated in prisons, asylum detention centres, mental health facilities and youth detention centres. For example, the High Court recently warned that guidance on the use of 'pain compliance techniques' used on young people in secure training centres may be contrary to Article 3 ECHR.[7]

What's the difference between torture and inhuman and degrading treatment?

The difference lies in the severity of the ill-treatment. Electrocuting a detainee, for instance, is plainly and obviously torture. By contrast, preventing a detainee from sleeping by use of bright lights and loud noises might not be sufficiently severe to qualify as torture, but it would likely qualify as inhuman treatment. In both cases, torture can be physical or non-physical (eg staging the execution of a family member).

The exact threshold is relative but in both cases, the ill-treatment must go beyond the 'inevitable element of suffering or humiliation connected with a given form of legitimate treatment or punishment'.[8] The European Court of Human Rights has also made clear that the distinction 'depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical or mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim'.[9]

Note also that the inhuman or degrading treatment need not be intentional, i.e. the state need not intend to cause pain and suffering in order for the conduct to breach Article 3 ECHR,[10] eg the government's failure to provide support to destitute asylum seekers under section 55 Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.[11]

Why does it matter?

The Torture Convention prohibits both torture, on the one hand, and inhuman and degrading treatment, on the other. However, its provisions sometimes draw a distinction, so that the UK government has - for instance - sometimes argued that the bar against returning a suspect to a risk of 'lesser' kinds of ill-treatment is not as absolute as the bar against returning a suspect to torture.
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits both torture and inhuman and degrading treatment equally, however. In Saadi v Italy, for instance, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights rejected the UK government's argument that a lesser degree of protection applied where the suspect is a risk to national security, noting that 'such an approach is not compatible with the absolute nature of the protection afforded by Article 3'. Since Article 3 is directly enforceable in UK courts under section 6 Human Rights Act, it is likely that the exact distinction is less relevant in UK law.

Where can I get more information?

UN Committee Against Torture

European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT)

Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture

REDRESS

Human Rights Watch report on diplomatic assurances

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Briefings form an important part of Justice's work. To see all our current work visit the In The News section of our website.

EM (Lebanon) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
[2008] UKHL 64

Facts

The woman - referred to only as EM due to reporting restrictions - came to the UK in 2004 with her son (referred to as AF), then aged eight. EM had divorced her husband in Lebanon due to his violent behaviour. The father had been imprisoned for theft and for failing to support AF. EM had sole custody of AF since birth but fled Lebanon due to its Shari'a-based family law that automatically awards fathers (or another male member of his family) physical custody of children from the age of seven. AF had had no contact with his father or with any family in Lebanon.

The Home Secretary, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and the Court of Appeal had all ruled that the appellant and her son should be returned to Lebanon and that this would not violate her right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights - although her right to see her son would be severely restricted it would not be completely denied.

The appellant appealed against the decision of the Court of Appeal.

Held

In a unanimous 5-0 ruling, the appeal was upheld.

The House of Lords ruled that on the particular facts of the case it would be a flagrant denial of the right to respect to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights for the government to remove EM and AF to Lebanon where she would automatically lose custody of him.

The court stressed the exceptional circumstances of the case in determining the right would be completely denied or nullified. AF's and EM's right to family life was entirely dependant on each other. There was no family life established in Lebanon. The court discussed the relevant jurisprudence concerning the test of the risk: following from R (Ullah) v Special Adjudicator [2004] UKHL 26, [2004] 2 AC 323 and R (Razgar) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] UKHL 27, [2004] 2 AC 368, which (para 15) established that 'The appellant can only succeed if she can show that the country to which she returns has a flagrant disregard for the rights protected by article 8'. A joint partly-dissenting opinion from a more recent case in Strasbourg was quoted to clarify the definition of 'flagrant' as 'a breach of the principles [of the right] which is so fundamental as to amount to a nullification, or destruction of the very essence, of the right guaranteed by that article' (Mamatkulov and Askarov v Turkey (2005) 41 EHRR 494, 537-539).

The court also paid particular attention to the views of AF which had not been put before the Court of Appeal. The hearing before the House underscored the importance of ascertaining and communicating to the court the views of a child such as AF in such a case.

The House of Lords also made clear that it was not the arbitrary and discriminatory character of the rule of Shari'a law regarding a child's physical custody automatically passing from the mother to the father at age seven (despite that being wholly incompatible with the basic principles underlying the Convention) which, uniquely thus far in the jurisprudence both of Strasbourg and the UK courts, which qualified this particular 'foreign' case as one for protection under Article 8. Rather it is the highly exceptional facts of the case which in combination provided utterly compelling humanitarian grounds against removal.

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PEOPLE

Shaheen Rahman

Richard Clayton QC

Shaheen Rahman
One Crown Office Row

You are a junior at One Crown Office Row, a well-respected set of chambers in public law and medical negligence. How did you arrive here?

I did pupillage here and was then offered a tenancy. I had read English at university - at Birmingham. It was my best subject at school and I enjoyed - and enjoy - reading. It was a good subject to take. A good proportion of the Bar have first degrees other than in law. I don't think that doing law at university gives you much of an advantage though clearly a law degree will allow you to cover more subjects in detail. But doing another subject at degree level can give you other advantages. For example, your writing style and analytical skills may be well developed if you have done a first degree in some other subject in the humanities.

Why did you change from English?

I wanted to be a barrister. I thought it would be a challenging job. I was quite good at debating and public speaking at school.

You did the conversion course, the CPE?

Yes. This gives you a fairly basic grounding in the law, as it is only a year-long course. In those days - the mid 1990s - human rights were not taught on the course. I have to say I did not find it particularly academically interesting, but have become more interested in the law as I have got into practice - it comes alive when you start using it to win cases. More important in getting my interest were the mini-pupillages.

Mini-pupillages were really important?

Yes. Very. They are also almost expected of applicants for pupillage. The arrangements are all much more professional than when I applied and there are formal application processes. It is also more competitive. The applicants just seem to get better and better. But they are really important to do. They give you experience of what a barrister's day-to-day life is actually like. They can also form a link between you and the chambers that could be helpful when it comes to applying for pupillage.

How did you enjoy your pupillage?

Pupillage was very hard work and it is like a year long interview. I was very relieved to be taken on. Once I started as a tenant it was far more enjoyable. When I first stated we just did the occasional road traffic case about once a week. It was quite fun and actually rather relaxing. Quite early on, I started doing work for the government - permission hearings in judicial review cases, which was very valuable as it gave you experience in front of high court judges. That was when I first did cases that involved human rights as the Human Rights Act 1998 had only recently come into force. Since then I've found that human rights arguments have come up in all sorts of cases - sometimes in unexpected jurisdictions. For example, I've used Article 6 arguments on the right to a fair trial at disciplinary hearings in the General Medical Council. Increasingly, tribunals and the lower courts are more open and familiar with legal arguments involving the Human Rights Act.

What kind of work do you do?

Public law, clinical negligence and professional disciplinary work. I have recently been working on some judicial review challenges to healthcare arrangements in prison. This involves using both the Human Rights Act and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. I've also spent a lot of time acting as a special advocate in control order cases.

How do you find that role?

Difficult. You have access to the confidential national security case which cannot be disclosed to your client. You generally cannot see your client once you have seen the material. It is obviously difficult to have a fair trial if you do not know the whole case against you. One of the main jobs of a special advocate is to get as much material as possible disclosed to the client. The courts have been rather good at seeking to make the process as fair as possible but it is a far from perfect system.

How could the role be improved?

I think lawyers could be trusted more - certainly in allowing the special advocate to go back to the client once they have seen the confidential evidence and getting instructions, to increase the prospects of a fair trial and the controllee being able to meaningfully respond to the case against him. I found meeting those actually subject to control orders quite powerful. I was not prepared for how adversely they are affected. But everything from where you live to where you are allowed to go and who you see can be controlled - so it drastically reduces quality of life.

You clearly enjoy being a barrister. Are you worried about the future of the Bar?

Not on the civil side. I know the pressures on those doing criminal work but, in civil, I think the Bar is still expanding. We are still generally taking on tenants. My sense is that other sets are as well. It is more competitive than when I started. But, if you are in good chambers, you can have a good career. People will look after you.

Richard Clayton QC
39 Essex Street

How did you get into law?

I read PPE at Oxford and got interested in the law through the report on cases in the then radical magazine, Time Out, on subjects such as squatting. The key was having been brought up in North America.

How was that?

I was in Toronto as a child in the 1960s. A lot of draft dodgers from the USA settled there and changed the whole culture of the city. From them, I got the idea that law can be used in the interests of oppression, because of the Vietnam war, and can be unfair. But I could also see what lawyers could do, as a result of the civil rights movement. Particularly at that time, lawyers in North America were much less establishment and less conventional figures than they were here. I was very influenced by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements active when I was growing up. I could see how law was also being used as an aspect of social emancipation. You couldn't live in Canada at that time, have progressive politics and not see the law as an agent of social change. So I decided to become a lawyer but I made a terrible mistake.

What?

I did three years in pupillage and just could not fit in terribly well. I refused to do any commercial work. I just wasn't interested. The other barristers in chambers just could not understand me. I had my hair specially cut for an interview for a scholarship and, even though I had done my best, it was still longer than anyone else's in the room. I was very energetic in my own way. I had to teach to pay my way through and I was busy doing that. I ran the Free Representation Unit for a couple of years and then moved on to help the Bar Council on its response to the Benson Royal Commission on legal services.

So how did you resolve that position?

I went to work for South Islington Law Centre, largely doing employment law. I worked there for a couple of years and then moved on. We were actually unable to work for the first year because the council changed hands three times and we could not get the backing to continue.

Where did you go?

I decided that I wanted to get into mainstream practice and I desperately needed more money. By then, I had a child to look after. I went back to Canada and worked in a large corporate law firm. I didn't like that very much and came back in 1983 as a single parent with a three-year old child to look after. I was unemployed for a year but then went back to the Bar in a small set of chambers. Then life changed dramatically when I met an old friend, Hugh Tomlinson. We had been students together: we had jointly been engaged in student occupations. We decided to write a book. We looked at various subjects - including, at one time, boundary disputes. In the end, we settled for civil actions against the police. That led to my moving to Hugh's chambers and things began to pick up.

And you started writing a lot.

Yes. I wrote for Legal Action, the Law Society Gazette, the New Law Journal and other specialist magazines. I wrote a book for the Legal Action Group on using industrial tribunals. I started to get cases through the writing. I began doing a lot of cases of civil actions against the police. The most interesting were a series of ten or 12 against officers in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad. But, that kind of case tends to involve complex factual disputes where cross-examination is important to get at the facts. They were not really intellectually interesting or legally challenging. Then, in 1994, Oxford University Press offered Hugh and me the chance of writing another book on any topic that we chose. We decided to write on how English law would look like if the European Convention on Human Rights were incorporated. We got relatively little done until the Labour government announced that it would pass a Human Rights Act and OUP then published our book on the Act two days before it came into force in 2000. Lord Bingham wrote a preface and it was extremely successful and has been quoted by the House of Lords on a number of occasions. It completely changed my life.

It led on to cases?

Yes. I always used to do a stream of civil liberties cases, acting for clients who were not very popular. I acted for George Blake, the spy, Jeremy Bamber, convicted of killing his step-father, Ian Brady, Michael Stone. I now do a lot of public law work with a certain amount of human rights and quite a lot of local authority oriented cases on public law. I have also been involved in a lot of constitutional cases - for example, appearing in the Privy Council in cases from Trinidad.

How do you see the Bar nowadays for new entrants?

Very hard. One problem is that you make the most important career decision at age 21 or 22 when you decide which set of chambers to enter. In a good set, you will probably be OK. In a bad one, you will find it hard to survive. Rough and ready operations cannot survive anymore. You need so much more investment to make a set of chambers work. I remember when we had a major debate about whether to buy a fax machine and the rent was only £200 a month. The bar is much more divided than it used to be between those doing well and those who are not. It is also much bigger. In 1977, there were about 3,500 barristers: there are now 12,000. Legal aid plays a much smaller part. Most juniors used to get a range of civil cases funded by legal aid on a whole range of topics - from housing to partnership. Now that has all dried up.

On the other hand, there are some really important cases that are still to be taken.

Yes. The Human Rights Act is making a fantastic difference to how rights can be protected. But we really need legal aid to be protected. We need also to make more of it where it funds a case that is important and successful. We should think how we can protect public interest cases by, for example, better rules on costs.

www.39essex.co.uk

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1. Attend our event on Saturday 15 November 2008.

On Saturday 15 November we will be running a morning event at BPP Law School called Human Rights in Practice: An Introduction. Click to find out more and download the programme.

To reserve a place please email jshrn@justice.org.uk. An email will be sent confirming your place. Places are limited and bookings will be on a first come first served basis. A reserve list will be run if necessary.

2. Debate with us.

Two or three volunteers are sought to help JUSTICE present a session on the arguments for and against a British bill of rights at an event to be held at the British Library, London by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on Sunday 7 December probably between 1 and 2pm.

The event will be entitled 'Our Rights' and will feature human rights-themed performances, including music, dance, theatre and spoken word, all accessible to all ages. The acts will be interspersed by 5-10 minute spoken word sections, which will include short talks about the purpose of the even - to celebrate human rights and bring home the message that human rights belong to all -, speeches or brief statements from different people on the lines of 'what human rights mean to me'. There will also be a family area targeted at children, workshops on the theme of human rights, storytelling, and a cinema area. The commission is expecting to have about 1,000 attendees, which will include roughly 500 members of the general public and 500 people involved in community groups.

Justice's contribution will be to open a debate on a bill of rights as one of the discussions that people can attend. We need two or three students willing to open discussion - for and against the idea of a bill of rights to take further the Human Rights Act 1998. They need to speak for no longer than 5 minutes and set out their case in a way that those attending, who will largely not be lawyers, can understand. If you would like to help with this then please write a paragraph setting out what you would say and contact Roger Smith, who will be chairing the debate, at rsmith@justice.org.uk by Friday 7 November.

3. Apply for an internship with JUSTICE.

There are three internship vacancies. As well as advertising for two winter interns to start in early 2009 (one working on criminal justice, the other on human rights - see here for more information) we are seeking the following:

Intern sought to assist Justice's director, Roger Smith, in working on the anticipated Constitutional Reform Bill and other issues of policy as well as to provide some administrative assistance in the office. This would be suitable for someone willing to work for a continuous full-time period of six weeks or more or for someone who could offer a set number of days each week over a longer period. The work will involve research on elements in the bill and, if it is delayed, other matters on which JUSTICE is lobbying. It will also require providing daily assistance to Liz Pepler, Justice's finance officer and administrator, on such matters as answering the phones, answering calls to the door and dealing with post. The post requires a knowledge of law and an understanding of the constitution and, therefore, a law degree or equivalent. To apply send a CV and covering letter to Roger Smith at rsmith@justice.org.uk by 1 November. This post is unpaid but JUSTICE will pay an allowance of £3 a day for lunch and will reimburse reasonable travel costs within the London area.

4. Write something for the student human rights network.

If you would like to have your work on the website please email jshrn@justice.org.uk. We will publish original and interesting pieces relevant to the issues covered by the electronic bulletin. Maximum word limit of articles 1500 words. All work remains the property of the author and does not necessarily reflect Justice's opinion.

5. Join JUSTICE as a student/pupil/trainee member.

See http://www.justice.org.uk/supportus/becomemember/index.html for further information.

6. Get involved in Justice's student human rights network.

We intend to develop the network as a way of bringing together and encouraging students, trainees and pupils interested in human rights. Would you like JUSTICE to provide a speaker for an event? Would you like to have some material on JUSTICE to distribute at your college, university, firm, chambers?

To join or contact us about anything to do with the network:
email jshrn@justice.org.uk

6. Other issues and events

Call for nominations for Human Rights Awards 2008
Click here for more information

Oxfam climate change competition
Oxfam is inviting 3,500-word complaints to identify the plaintiffs, defendants, remedies south, and arguments that are considered enforceable in an existing international legal forum. The agency hopes that the competition will provide effective pro-bono advice to developing countries on how they could best use international law to protect their people's human rights in the face of climate change.

This competition is being launched in collaboration with Advocates for International Development and the Climate Justice Programme. It will be judged by a panel of eminent lawyers and the winners will be announced in March 2009 to coincide with the release from the UN OHCHR. The winning submissions will be published on our websites and the winners will each receive a £100 voucher for books or e-goods from the Centre for Alternative Technology.

FFI please visit: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/climate_change/bp117_climatecompetition.html

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