In 2012, why did Toronto Canada lawyers appear in London, before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council? Michael Currie wrote that the JCPC heard its last Canadian appeal in 1959. Brooke LJ wrote In the edition of The National (the newsletter for the Canadian Bar Association) for June-July 1995, Robert (Bert) MacKinnon wrote this memory of that last Canadian case in the Privy Council. I can add information to the discussion of the last case that went from Canada to the Privy Council. I was a junior counsel for the Respondent on that case: Ponoka Calmar Oils Ltd.v. Earl F Wakefield Co [1960] A.C. 18. But in Ross v Bank of Commerce (Saint Kitts Nevis) Trust and Savings Association Ltd (St. Christopher and Nevis) [2012] UKPC 3 (15 February 2012), Charles McBryan Finlay QC and Frank E Walwyn appeared for the Appellant. But neither is called to the Bar of any United Kingdom country! Both are called to the Bar of Ontario. Bryan Finlay's website pictures him before the JCPC. Appeared in London as counsel for the appellant before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on an appeal from the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal. E. Anthony Ross v Bank of Commerce (Saint Kitts Nevis) Trust and Savings Association Limited [2012] UKPC3. How commonly do Canadian lawyers appear before the JCPC nowadays? Why not instruct English barristers for representation before the JCPC? What advantages can Canadian lawyers have over English barristers in JCPC cases?
The cited case (Ross [2012] UKPC 3) is not a Canadian case. It is from St Kitts and Nevis, an appeal from the Court of Appeal of that small Caribbean country to the Privy Council. The two barristers are from the same firm based in Canada (WeirFoulds LLP), a firm which also has a cross-jurisdictional practice encompassing several countries in the eastern Caribbean who share their appellate court system. Those nations also have a common pathway for onward appeals to the Privy Council, for essentially historical reasons dating from the era of the British Empire. Thus, counsels' appearance in this case is not because they are Canadian, but because of their separate entitlement to appear in Caribbean appeals. Frank Walwyn's biography (linked in the question) says he is &quot;He is licensed to practise law in Canada, and is also a member of the bars of Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Dominica, Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis.&quot; (my emphasis). Membership in the St Kitts bar was enough for him to be able to also appear before the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, and therefore the JCPC as well. Bryan Finlay's biography does not specify, but as senior partner in the same firm he may well have the same status. In any case, since &quot;duly qualified members of the Bar in countries from which appeals to the Queen in Council lie have a right of audience before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council&quot; (Halsbury's Laws of England, vol. 66, para 795, 2020 ed.) he could appear before the JCPC whether or not he was allowed to do so in lower courts. Regarding your Q2 (Why Canadians?): In this case, the appeal was from St Kitts, which is a very small country of about 50k people. This would give a small talent pool from which to draw, if only barristers from St Kitts were eligible to practise in appeals. That is why the shared Eastern Caribbean court system exists and why there is some added generosity about qualifications between the participating countries. While the appellant Ross might have had many choices, he himself is &quot;a Canadian lawyer who was at the time [= 1983] practising in Halifax, Nova Scotia&quot;, and could therefore have been drawn to a Canadian firm with a Caribbean practice. The appeal, moreover, does not appear to have turned on any local peculiarity of St Kitts' law. It was mainly about how certain commercial documents should be interpreted. The issues arising would be accessible to practitioners from many common-law countries. Canada is not especially at an advantage or disadvantage, and neither is England. There are several barristers in London who have Caribbean experience and qualifications and who are more commonly instructed to appear on Caribbean-related cases (London is a nexus for commercial litigation, and several Caribbean jurisdictions are commercially important in this way, such as the Cayman Islands). I have no data on your Q1 (How many Canadians?). I expect that there are not many, because the natural choice of counsel might be either a London-based barrister, or one from the jurisdiction of origin who has been handling the case so far, rather than from a third country with no recent history of JCPC appeals. You could gather your own data from case reports if you are so inclined; as far as I know there isn't a systematic pre-existing study available.
The court receives petitions for something like 8,000 cases annually, but it only hears something like 75 to 100 cases. There is not enough time or manpower to address each case that comes up, so the vast majority of the cases are simply rejected without comment. There are some notable exceptions, but a review of the order list from the day before Trump's order might give you a better feel for the caseload the court is dealing with and how unremarkable it is for an order to be brief, unsigned, and with no noted dissents. The only significance of the Court disposing of Trump's case this way is that it indicates none of the justices considered the issues he was raising to be serious enough to merit their attention.
The reference to &quot;most junior counsel present&quot; does literally mean the most recently qualified barrister who happens to be in the court. That is confirmed by Polter's response: &quot;I was only called last term!&quot; The story takes place in 1860. By this time, it was common for the court to assign a barrister who happened to be in court to conduct the defence of an accused person. According to Bentley, English Criminal Justice in the 19th Century (1998), p 110–111: Assignment was a practice developed by the judges as a means of ensuring that prisoners facing grave charges did not go undefended for want of means. The judge would ask one of the counsel present in court to undertake the prisoner's defence without fee, a request never in practice refused … During the debates on the Prisoners' Counsel Bill of 1834, one of the arguments used against the assignment of counsel clause which it contained was that the judges already had power to assign counsel, and that counsel never refused to act … So far as one can judge from trial reports, assignment of counsel to poor prisoners in felony cases was, and remained, a rare occurrence during the late 1820s and 1830s, but became increasingly common during the 1840s and 1850s. But I can't find any historical analogue to Polter's virtuosic success in prosecuting a &quot;dock brief&quot; on behalf of the Crown. As Bentley explains, the practice of assigning counsel evolved for the benefit of the accused, not the Crown. And the barrister assigned was not invariably the &quot;most junior counsel present&quot; (p 114): The selection was made from amongst those in court not already engaged in the case. Sometimes the judge would call on the most senior counsel in court. Sometimes one of the barristers present in court would volunteer his services. Occasionally the accused would be invited to choose from the barristers in court. Modern practice The scenario in the story, where the advocate briefed to appear is in another court, having assumed (or hoped) that the present matter would not be reached in the judge's list, remains common in busy criminal courts throughout the common law world. Judges have various ways of dealing with this situation, where a hearing cannot proceed efficiently because of a lack of legal representation. Some matters, such as hearings at which an accused person must decide whether to plead guilty or not guilty, or make scheduling arrangements for trial, or be sentenced for a minor offence, are still routinely handled by lawyers who receive instructions on the day of the hearing. This is usually formalised through systems like the duty solicitors scheme operated by the Legal Aid Agency. When duty lawyers are unavailable, it is not unheard of for judges and magistrates to ask counsel physically in the courtroom to provide limited pro bono assistance to an unrepresented party. Such requests are limited to the kind of representation ordinarily provided by duty lawyers, and would not extend to conduct of a jury trial with zero preparation. As well as being significantly more demanding due to the greater complexity of modern criminal law practice, this would today be considered a breach of the right to a fair hearing. I have personally seen lawyers present in the courtroom, in suburban magistrates' courts around Australia, appointed to represent defendants at procedural hearings when there is no duty lawyer available. Lawyers volunteer for this as part of their professional duty to the administration of justice, or even as a way to find new clients. However, this never applies to a prosecution brief. At worst, an irritated judge might force another prosecutor in court for unrelated cases to account for their colleague's absence, or dismiss the case for want of prosecution.
I would say all the similarities and differences between approaching a barrister directly and going through a solicitor are set out in the PDF. The historical division of barristers and solicitors is discussed in the document. Traditionally, solicitors took on cases and did the 'behind the scenes' preparation before a case went to trial, and barristers represented that client in the courtroom using the prepared materials. You needed to go through a solicitor in order to be represented by a barrister; there was no way of approaching a barrister directly yourself as a lay person. While this has changed with the Public Access Barrister scheme, this way of instructing a barrister is still seen as the 'default' method. In the usual scheme of things, you, as a client, would deal with a solicitor, and they would then instruct a barrister to represent you in court. In the Public Access Barristers scheme, you, the client, effectively miss out the solicitor stage and you approach the barrister directly. But this leaves something of a gap. In the typical client-solicitor-barrister model, the solicitor's role is to prepare the case for the barrister: collating documents for court, for example. The barrister then takes the papers, reads them, prepares an argument based on those documents and puts the client's case in a courtroom. (This isn't always the case, as the document makes clear: some barristers are not qualified to conduct litigation, for example, whereas some solicitors are qualified to represent clients in court. It's more the typical and historical model.) In the Public Access Barrister scheme, there is no solicitor to prepare the case. From the PDF provided, this means that: this is cheaper, as you're not paying for two lawyers; but conversely: you will have to undertake some of the preparation yourself, e.g. collating the papers, and there are some cases which are too complex for a client to take directly to a barrister, because a solicitor would be required to prepare all of the documents necessary for the trial. In terms of similarities, you will still end up receiving the advice and/or the representation of a barrister; you simply won't be going through a third party, but will be dealing directly with that barrister.
The origin of Parliament was from the curia regis, the King's Court. In that early form, the King's Court exercised both judicial and legislative functions. In 1215, with the Magna Carta and the beginning of Parliaments, the House of Lords assumed the judicial functions of the King's Court. Prior to 1876, it was possible for any member of the House of Lords to hear appeals. Eventually, however, the judicial function tended to be exercised by those appointed specifically to judicial office in the House of Lords, although this was not a formal restriction until 1876. Since 1876 and until 2009, the judicial function of the House of Lords was formally restricted to be exercised by the Law Lords (see s. 5 of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876). However, the outcome of the appeal was also still formally an action of the entire House of Lords, on the recommendation of the panel of Law Lords that heard the appeal (see Stanley Clark, &quot;Gentlemen, Their Lordships&quot;, p. 1443-44). And custom was that only the Law Lords that heard the appeal would vote, with all other members of the House of Lords abstaining.1 Rather than lords via hereditary peerage, the Law Lords were Lords/Ladies holding special qualifications and having received specific appointment to be a &quot;Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.&quot; Among other qualifications, they would have already served in a high court or practised as a barrister for fifteen years. As an example of the kind of background a person might have before appointment as a Law Lord, this is Lord Denning's Wikipedia introduction: He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. Denning became a judge in 1944 when he was appointed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, and transferred to the King's Bench Division in 1945. He was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948 after less than five years in the High Court. He became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957 and after five years in the House of Lords returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years. In 2009, the judicial function of the House of Lords was transfered to the UK Supreme Court. The Law Lords at the time became the first justices of the UK Supreme Court. 1. Citation practice is to indicate that a judgment is from the House of Lords by using parentheses after identifying the reporter. E.g.: &quot;Livingstone v. Rawyards Coal Co. (1880), 5 App. Cas. 25 (H.L.).&quot; Starting in 2001, the House of Lords used vendor-neutral citations managed by the British and Irish Legal Information Institute. The vendor-neutral citations for judgments from the House of Lords use &quot;UKHL&quot; as the abbreviation. BAILII has also provided many older judgments from the House of Lords with unofficial neutral citations following the same convention.
Can the subject actually sue me in England, or is it possible to sue only in the EU country I posted the article from, or in the US where the article is actually hosted? Yes. If the online encyclopedia is available in the UK, then you have libelled them in the UK and, indeed, in every country where it is available. They can choose to sue in and under the laws of any country where they were libelled. If the subject can and does sue in England, what happens exactly? This is laid out in the Civil Procedure Rules Am I correct in presuming that I will be notified of this by mail and asked to enter a defence? You will definitely need to be served with the Particulars of Claim, however, this may come by other methods than snail mail. If so, what happens if I ignore the matter? Will a default judgment against me necessarily be entered, or will the court duly consider the plaintiff's case, perform the bare minimum investigation/reasoning necessary to determine which arguments of theirs are (un)sound, and so possibly rule in my favour? A default judgement will be entered providing the Particulars of Claim show a cause of action on its face. The court will not examine any evidence or enquire into the veracity of the statements made on the Particulars of Claim. In short, unless the plaintiff has ballsed something up - you lose. If I do choose to respond, can I hire an England-based lawyer to handle everything remotely, or can I be compelled to physically attend the court in England? You are generally not required to attend court in a civil matter unless you need to testify. Even then, arrangements can be made for remote testimony. If the court rules for the plaintiff and awards damages, can this judgment be enforced in the EU, or would it apply only in the UK? It can be enforced in the EU. As a courtesy or by treaty, domestic jurisdictions will enforce foreign judgements in most cases. If the court rules in my favour, would I recoup my legal fees? You will probably recoup some but not all of your legal fees, say 50-60%. Costs orders are complicated - talk to your lawyer.
Extradition is a special procedure that is tightly governed by statute - currently the Extradition Act 2003. That Act provides that, for extradition from England (as opposed to Scotland, etc.) to the United States (an example of a Category 2 Territory), an initial hearing is to take place before &quot;the appropriate judge&quot;. This is, per s.139(1)(a), a designated &quot;District Judge (Magistrates' Courts)&quot;. A DJMC sits in a magistrates' court, and is a professional judge as opposed to a layperson like an ordinary Justice of the Peace. The hearing is meant to resemble summary proceedings in the magistrates' court, but it has its own special rules. Those include a special appeals procedure which is different from the ordinary way that criminal cases can be appealed. Some things that could normally happen in a magistrates' court cannot happen here, such as varying an order at a later date (see R (Mann) v Westminster Magistrates Court [2010] EWHC 48 (Admin)). The way that this is phrased means that the jurisdiction is not conferred on the magistrates' court (which happens to have a DJ sitting in it), but on the DJMC themselves. The Criminal Procedure Rules 2014, Rule 17.2(a) are careful to say that when they say &quot;magistrates' court&quot; in this context, they are talking about the court that the judge has convened for the purposes of the Extradition Act. These rules are only applicable because the Act specifically provides for them in its s.210; they don't come in automatically as they would for criminal proceedings in a magistrates' court, because this is a special process with its own law, as expounded in the Explanatory Notes to the rules. In the Assange case, the DJMC was Vanessa Baraitser, including at Woolwich and the Old Bailey. The proceedings were under the Extradition Act as explained above. The court chose to sit in various buildings, other than Westminster Magistrates Court, for practical reasons due to the high level of public interest in the case, and related security considerations. The hearing was booked to last four weeks, which is very unusually long. Proceedings were live-streamed to other court buildings to allow members of the public and media to follow along. All of that does not mean that the proceedings were in a Crown Court or County Court. They were in buildings used by those courts, but took place before the designated DJMC according to the special procedure of the Extradition Act. That procedure, among other things, means that the extradition hearing cannot take place as a hearing of some other court, and there is no jury no matter how much the defendant wants one.
Generally speaking, British courts, when making judgments on constitutional matters regard themselves as interpreting existing law, rather than creating new law. But technically speaking, any legal precedent established by a court can be interpreted as "creation of new law". For the avoidance of doubt, the sources of law in the law of England and Wales include: statute law, constitutional convention, prerogative powers, common law, and legal commentary. I may have missed some out and may edit those in later. Common law refers to the judgments of courts. So here we come to your question: Several legal principles and precedents were established by this judgment, and you may consider this new "law": The court held that prerogative powers are justiciable - courts can limit the scope of these powers The prerogative power in question had limits. It can be limited when its use has an extreme detrimental effect on the democracy of the UK and parliamentary sovereignty. What is important with point one is that the court recognised that this power has always existed, stemming as far back as the bill of rights in the 17th century. As such, the court is implying that it is creating nothing new, but recognising a law that has always existed. You will see a LOT of this when studying constitutional law.