NEWS: Opportunities for Strategic Litigation Seminar

Posted On: 14 April 2011

Opportunities for Strategic Litigation Seminar
27th November 2010

The Murray Stable Public and Human Rights Law Group, in conjunction with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission, recently held a seminar to explore how the Commissions' unique legal powers can be put to better use to further their vision for human rights. Among the speakers at this seminar, which was co-chaired by Jonathan Mitchell QC and by Claudia Bennett of EHRC, were Ailsa Carmichael QC, Lorna Drummond, and Alan Caskie.

The main purpose of the seminar was to start a conversation between EHRC and SHRC on the one hand and the private legal profession and the law centres on the other. We want to identify together the priorities for human rights strategic litigation in Scotland.

Strategic litigation, tackling embedded or broader systemic issues of human rights abuses and/or discrimination for the benefit of all those affected, offers a mechanism to use the law to improve the lives of the people of Scotland. There is a real need for this, especially in view of the many people who, for various reasons, are not in the position to use a sometimes complex and hard to access legal system.  This includes those people who can be the most vulnerable to human rights abuses.

The format of the seminar was a series of short talks by members of the Murray Stable and others, on subjects such as the role of the Commissions, issues relative to intervention in legal cases, questions of title and interest, access to justice and legal aid, and criminal justice. This was followed by a general discussion.

The papers are now available here: (i) Seminar handout [-]; (ii) Talks and discussion [-]; (iii) Paper by Claudia Bennett of EHRC [-].

The seminar was considered to be very successful by those attending.  There was overall agreement that a more coherent approach to issues of strategic litigation in Scotland is needed. One of the ideas resulting from the discussion which had universal support, was to call EHRC as an 'interested party' in Judicial Reviews with a human rights angle. This would be a very effective way of informing the Commission of potentially strategic cases, and would give it an easy means of intervention.

As a result of the seminar, the Commission has already been called as an interested party in an immigration and asylum case before the Court of Session and been approached on various other matters with relevance for the Commission.