ARTICLES by our Direct Access Barristers

It is a cliché to quote Winston Churchill on democracy, who described it as the worst form of government, except for all the others. The analysis tends to stop there. It is rare in modern times to question the notion of democracy. Aside from the bare notion of democracy, there is the question of who should have the franchise. The purpose of this article is to scrutinise the above cliché, rather than to propose any specific form of government or reach any firm conclusio

In Aabar Holdings Sarl v Glencore plc [2026] EWHC 877 (Comm), Mr Justice Picken has delivered a second significant judgment concerning legal advice privilege. The case concerned the scope of legal advice privilege in relation to “internal communications between members of the client group and/or documents created by a member of the client group”. The judge was not persuaded that the case of Three Rivers (No.5) [2003] Q.B. 1556 required him to find that legal advice privilege

Article by Joseph Chiffers Netfilx has recently a produced a series called the Tik Tok Killer which is a harrowing drama about the disappearance and alleged murder of Esther Estepa in Spain. The alleged killer is standing trial and is of course innocent until proven guilty. Nonetheless, I found it significant that the alleged killer was convicted previously of four murders and was freed as a consequence of a 2013 ruling by the ECtHR. Subsequent rulings have clarified that who

Article by Joseph Chiffers The purpose of this article is to argue that the current employment law regime: 1. Allows for the exertion of ideological control of employees by employers. 2. Damages small businesses, which helps large corporations who compete with these small businesses. This in turn has wider sociological effects. Ideological control Most employment contracts contain clauses that prohibit the employee from bringing the reputation of the e

In the case of DKH Retail Ltd and others v City Football Group Ltd [2024] EWHC 3231 (Ch) the Court concluded that it had the power under CPR 3.1(2) (p) to conduct and require a mediation and not merely an early neutral evaluation. This follows a line of earlier cases, although it appears to be significant in being the first time that the Court has compelled mediation. There is an understandable appeal in some cases for compulsory mediation, although the difficulty with this

In the case of Evans Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2025] UKFTT 1112 (TC) - https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukftt/tc/2025/1112#download-options - a judge in the Upper Tax Tribunal used AI to assist him in the making of a case management decision. The decision did not involve any ruling on witness credibility and the use of AI was for summarising the documents and not for legal research. The judge stated that this was a proper use of AI, namely as a tool. The jud

Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, a Palestinian Doctor practising in the UK, was subject to an interim suspension by the GMC. See https://www.mpts-uk.org/-/media/mpts-rod-files/dr-aladwan-iot_new_suspension_15-months.pdf for the decision. The case largely concerns allegations of antisemitism. I do not know what definition of antisemitism is being employed by the GMC. They may be using the IHRA definition. This definition appears to include the making of empirical claims, which in turn

I have written on this blog before about ‘Anarcho-Tyranny’; see https://www.jsc-chambers.co.uk/post/anarcho-tyranny-joseph-chiffers . An almost perfect example of this has been provided recently by the case of Elizabeth Kinney, an alleged assault victim who in a private message to a friend, described the alleged perpetrator as a “faggot” [1] ; see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15302729/Assault-victim-convicted-homophobic-hate-crime.html To quote from the article: “

This article is about the cases of Lucy Connelly and Ricky Jones and whether they reveal a form of two-tier justice. Due to pressure of...