Robert Sharp

Barrister

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Rosencrantz, Guildernstern, Coronavirus Incubators and The Rule of Law Are All Dead

22 October 2020 / / 0 Comments

One of the awful things about COVID-19 is that the moment of infection passes unnoticed. It’s the asymptomatic period that drives up the exponential spread and makes it so difficult to stop. This point by Christina Paget is chilling:

Those who die, do so after about two weeks in hospital on average. This means that almost all the people who are going to die from covid over the next four weeks already have covid.

Christina Paget, ‘A circuit-break will save thousands of lives’ Politics.co.uk

There’s a marvellous line at the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently:

GUILDENSTERN: There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.

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The Undermining the Rule of Law Bill

8 October 2020 / / 0 Comments

This comment by David Allen Green on Monday has stuck in my mind.


David also notes that the solution to this constitutional wrecking is political, and the challenge is to make the public care. Continue reading

Vagueness, Overbreadth and Unbridled Discretion in Law-making

28 September 2020 / / 1 Comment

This crazy story about a university claiming that posters in a window “break the law” is a good example of how chaotic and inconsistent law-making can lead to a denial of liberty. Quick thread. #

I’ve been doing some reading on the ‘chilling effect’ recently. It’s usually used with regards to freedom of expression, but it’s a term imported from US legal thought, and can be applied to any kind of liberty or lawful activity. #

Supreme Court Justice William Brennan warned of how a ‘chill’ can be “generated by vagueness, overbreadth and unbridled discretion” of laws/state powers used to curb speech. (Dissent in Walker v City of Birmingham, 388 US 307 in 1967) #

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Talking About Coronavirus Testing Inefficiencies on the BBC

16 September 2020 / / 1 Comment

I have some mild coronavirus-like symptoms. Its probably nothing, but now everyone in our household needs a test. Life and work are on hold while we struggle to get an appointment, and then wait for the results.
Yesterday morning I spoke to Vanessa Feltz on the BBC Radio London Breakfast show about my frustrations. You can listen below or on SoundCloud. The full show is available on BBC Sounds for 30 days.
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Cold Take: The EU Referendum Act should have included implementation provisions

1 September 2020 / / 0 Comments

For A Thing, I’ve been reading the court judgments in the controversial Brexit cases brought by Gina Miller.

The first of these was R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin) and [2017] UKSC 5.

The outcome of the case is well known. Theresa May wanted to send the Article 50 notification to Brussels, and believed she could do so without recourse to parliament, because the making and breaking of treaties is a prerogative power. The claimants disagreed, saying that parliament had created new domestic rights and a new source of law when it enacted the European Communities Act 1972, which only parliament could undo.

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