Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

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Urging #LibelReform in Scottish Legal News

26 November 2015 / / 0 Comments

Earlier this week I spoke to journalist Kapil Summan on behalf of English PEN and the Libel Reform Campaign, on the issue of reforming the UK defamation laws.
The Defamation Act 2013, you will recall, reformed the law in England & Wales.  But MSPs at Holyrood and MLAs at Stormont have yet to legislate for their jurisdictions.
I extemporised on why reform in required in both places! Kapil wrote up two versions of the interview, for Scottish Legal News and Irish Legal News. 
Key message:

The fact the Defamation Act seems to be working as Parliament intended is precisely what we were after so we’re going into this … with confidence that the Defamation Act is a very strong blueprint for reform in other jurisdictions.

Let's ban corporations from using law to silence their critics

25 November 2015 / / 0 Comments

English PEN is working with Scottish PEN on a campaign to reform the law of defamation in Scotland.  I wrote an opinion piece for the Herald’s ‘Agenda’ slot, which was published in the paper yesterday.  There was also a news report about it, giving more information about corporations that sue.

The law of defamation in Scotland is woefully out of date.
It has not been reviewed since 1996, before the Scottish Parliament was re-established.
During this time, the internet has evolved from a hobbyist’s plaything into the centre of public discourse, and yet defamation law has failed to adapt to digital communication. Continue reading

Do cis white straight men know what its like?

20 November 2015 / / 2 Comments

In an enlightening article on Little Atoms about ‘safe spaces’ and free speech, Marie Le Conte writes:

While discussions of identity and privilege online haven’t always been constructive in recent times, it’s hard to deny that this isn’t something cis straight white men will ever get. This, of course, doesn’t mean that they never get picked on, or that their lives must therefore be perfect; it’s just that they’ll never know what it feels like to be continuously attacked for what they represent, not who they are.

The phrase “its just that they’ll never know what its like” jumped out at me, because in its absolutist form I think its very wrong. Cis straight white men might not know what its like; and they will certainly never know what it is to be picked on in this way; but it is certainly possible that they can know what it is like to be picked on… because those who have experienced it can describe it to them! Continue reading

After Paris, maybe we need to slap ISIS about with Matthew's Gospel?

17 November 2015 / / 1 Comment

Since the hideous Paris attacks last week, a point that has been made over and over again is that ISIS (or, Daesh if you want to annoy them) have a strategy of provocation.  Their atrocities are designed to ‘sharpen the contradictions‘ by provoking people in Western countries into acts of racism, and provoking Western governments into acts of war.  They hope that by sowing division and actually causing human rights abuses against minorities, more Muslims in these countries will become disaffected and radicalised.  Journalist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed has a good analysis of the strategy: Continue reading

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