The Equality Act 2010 continues to attract widely differing reactions. The Reform Party now proposes to repeal it completely on day one. Meanwhile Labour MP, Nadia Whittome, calls for parliament to amend it to ensure that single sex spaces are “trans-inclusive”.    A more nuanced critique is here offered by a young member of the Society. “Luna” argues that the Act’s policies are self-contradictory: its positive action and public sector equality duty provisions actually mandate discriminating...

The Society is actively opposing the government's proposals to restrict jury trial.  Evidence on behalf of the Society has been submitted to, and accepted by, the House of Commons Justice Select Committee.  In an earlier personal blog article Oliver Sells KC, who is leading the Society's team, explained the principle of the value of jury trial. In this piece Nick Daly and William Crossman, who have undertaken considerable work in the jury trial team, develop why the government's plan is the...

The government has now published its Bill to restrict jury trial. In the first of several publications from the Society’s working party on the criminal courts Oliver Sells KC, who leads the group, reflects on why jury trial is so important in Britain.   It is not necessary to trawl through the history books or the academic treatises to see why the jury plays such a central role in the legal system of the British Isles. It has been so for over 800 years, it has changed from time to time, it...