A city named ‘Sue’
And a lot more too
A lady chief justice addressed a lady mayor of London for the first time last night at the City of London’s annual dinner for HM judges. Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill told Alderwoman Dame Susan Langley that it was not only the first year in which women were leading both the city and the judiciary but also the first in which a “Sue” had taken both roles.
“Of course, the nominative determinism of my own name is not lost on me,” said Carr. “Nor perhaps, should it be lost on my lady mayor, given that the city plays no small part in making London the disputes capital of the world.”
Among aims shared by the city and the law, Carr said, was a mutual interest in improving diversity. But that should come as no surprise:
The two enjoy one of the longest, beneficial connections in our proud histories. Long before the inns of court were a twinkle in justice’s eye, law was taught in the city. We have a relationship then that goes back to at least the 12th century. We are still waiting to hear which gemstone celebrates that particular anniversary.
The commitment of the judiciary, the government and the city to the delivery of justice for all “burns as brightly tonight as ever”, Carr told an audience that included the justice secretary David Lammy. “As long as we continue to think carefully about how to effect evolutionary improvements to our justice system — ones which draw on the best of the past to better secure the courts’ ability to deliver justice in the future — we will continue to enable our judges to do right by all, without fear or favour.”
News in brief
The government has postponed publication of at least two long-awaited reports commissioned by ministers from senior lawyers — apparently to avoid influencing the outcome of an election to the leadership of the Labour Party that everyone can see is never going to take place.
Even so, it has been a busy week so far:
Rajiv Menon KC
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb is expected to consider at the end of this month whether Rajiv Menon KC acted in contempt of court in his address to a jury on 8 January 2026.
Mr Justice Nicklin instituted proceedings on Tuesday after seeing material that he thought was “capable of supporting allegations that, in identified respects, the address departed from rulings made by the trial judge, or was in disobedience of them, in a manner arguably capable of interfering with, or creating a real risk of impeding, the due administration of justice”.
There’s a link to Nicklin’s ruling in the update to my report last week of an earlier ruling by the trial judge, Mr Justice Johnson.
Anurag Mohindru KC
Also on Tuesday, Johnson quashed the disbarment of Anurag Mohindru KC and substituted a period of suspension that has now been served. The judge said Mohindru’s “misconduct occurred many years ago, has not been repeated, and [his] subsequent conduct has demonstrated a sustained record of integrity. In such a case, public confidence may be maintained by a sanction which marks the gravity of the dishonesty without permanently excluding the practitioner from the profession”.
Shabir Ahmed
People are asking why the leader of the Rochdale grooming gang, who is due for release today after serving some 14 years of a 19-year sentence, cannot be deported.
Under section 3(5) of the Immigration Act 1971, a person who is not a British citizen is liable to deportation from the United Kingdom if the secretary of state deems his deportation to be conducive to the public good.
Under section 3(6) of the act, a person who is not a British citizen is liable to deportation from the United Kingdom if convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment and recommended for deportation by a court the time of conviction.
But section 7 of the act creates exceptions to these provisions for Commonwealth citizens who were ordinarily resident in the UK when the act came into force at the beginning of 1973.
It says someone in that position is not liable to deportation under section 3(5) if at the time of the secretary of state's decision he had been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom for the past five years
And he cannot be recommended for deportation under section 3(6) if he had been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom for the five years preceding his conviction.
That’s understood to apply to Shabir Ahmed.
Although parliament is sovereign, there’s a widely held view that it would be wrong to subject an offender to a harsher punishment by changing the law after an offence has been committed.
It seems to me that deporting Ahmed now as additional punishment for his original offences would breach this principle.
Update 1630: Contrary to what I wrote earlier, I’m advised that the human rights court would not regard deportation in a case such as this as in breach of article 7 of the European convention. The court would see it as an administrative measure of public order by the secretary of state, not part of the punishment for the offence.
The costs of rape
Ms Justice Obi has dismissed a claim by the director of public prosecutions for judicial review of a costs order made at the Crown Court.
A man accused of rape was acquitted last year after a judge at Inner London Crown Court upheld a submission that there was no case to answer. Prosecutors were ordered to pay his legal costs of £97,000
At the time of the alleged rape, in 2018, he and the complainant were in a relationship. They lived in a shared house with other housemates but had separate bedrooms. They had consensual sexual intercourse one night. But the complainant, who was drunk, said she had withdrawn her consent just before she fell asleep.
The question for the High Court judge was not whether the decision to prosecute was one which no reasonable prosecutor could properly have made. That was a question for Judge Boyle, the trial judge. What Obi had to decide was whether the judge’s conclusion to that effect was one which no reasonable judge could have reached.
She concluded that his decision to award costs was not irrational.
CCRC
One of the first things that Dame Vera Baird KC did when she was appointed interim chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission was to invite an independent inspectorate to examine its casework.
“Our findings do not highlight a failing organisation,” the inspectors say in their report this morning.
“While this report sets out 34 recommendations, the casework decisions in the 60 cases we examined were ultimately sound and reached the right conclusions in their recommendations to commissioners, the final decision-makers. However, we found several key issues that need to be urgently addressed, which will help the CCRC make better decisions more quickly, become much more efficient and gain greater assurance in the quality of its own casework.”
You can read my analysis of the report — and of the CCRC’s action plan, published this morning — in tomorrow’s Law Society Gazette. I’ll publish a link tomorrow and there’ll be a bonus for my paid subscribers.