5th July - Law News

Edition 5304 LawNewsIndex is a UK based daily legal news archive on Law, Lawyers, Law Firms, Jurisprudence, Legislation, Litigation, Legal Ethics, Human Rights and Social Justice related issues since 2011.

Today's Highlighted Video: R (on the application of Bano) (Appellant) v London Borough of Waltham Forest (Respondent) Case ID: UKSC/2025/0050 

A selection of important developments in the world of law and justice (for a comprehensive look at the news and events, please visit @theLawMap Twitter/X feed):

Saturday Conversations on Law

• Public family law cases are taking two weeks less to complete than they did last year, according to the family court statistics quarterly: January to March 2026, published last week | New Law Journal
• What rights is the government proposing for co-habiting couples?
• FCA car finance scheme suspended and thrown into doubt as dates given for legal challenge from law firm and lenders | Law Gazette
• The Sentencing Council is making a series of amendments to its guidelines for the magistrates’ courts and Crown Court | New Law Journal
• Hundreds join global support group for survivors of drug-facilitated rape. Zoe Watts and Amanda Stanhope launched network after being repeatedly assaulted by partners while unconscious
• Businesses are operating in an increasingly volatile environment due to technology, geopolitical and regulatory threats, according to Clyde & Co’s annual corporate risk radar survey | New Law Journal

 

 The Sunday Editorial: 

LawNewsIndex was founded as a way of cataloguing the ongoing changes in the UK justice system as well as documenting social justice related conversations as observed through the Twitter/X account @thelawmap. In the decade and half since 2011, LawNewsIndex has collated thousands of articles documenting how the justice system in Britain had responded to local and international events. The ongoing archive on justice, law and societal changes covers each day since December 2011. Since July 2026, a new weekend feature comprising essays, comments or original creative writing on an eclectic range of subjects is being published as the Sunday Editorial by a range of writers:  

 

In Defence of Decency in a Polarised Age: Our age is reactionary. We are palpably polarised. So we are led to believe. Perhaps there is some truth in this. Those who have formed any opinion shall always note others who have formed exactly the opposite opinion. However, it is my belief that the temptation to vent our feelings through permanently connected electronic devices project a more quarrelsome world. Opinions expressed in the virtual world from the safety of our keyboards lack the consideration most of us reserve for each other in physical debates across a table at a café or a pub.

Folklore, sagas, ancient poetry and even graffiti left by Roman soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall attest angst and differences of opinions among our ancestors. If culture is the totality of all human expressions, our differences are important in shaping individual identities. It provides the necessary space for us to reflect on who we are in relation to who we aren’t. Differences are all the more important because the problems we face in this age such as the scarcity of resources and the impact of man-made climate change require all the accumulated wisdom of past generations in alliance with contemporary scientific knowledge if we wish to preserve a world fit for those who shall come after us.

If life is a journey to celebrate timeless moments, there is always a question whether it should be about mere survival or whether each one of us are guaranteed the same opportunity to be the best version of our selves regardless of origin. Mere survival may have been the lot of our ancestors, but we should be offered the opportunity to thrive given the affluent and globally interconnected age we live in.

This very question also follows the consideration for the kind of society we wish to live in that ought to guarantee the absolute basic human rights: the right to life, freedom from slavery and torture, the right to liberty and security, the right to equality and the right to a fair trial. Across the western world we are witnessing a lurch to authoritarianism and governments who are not shy to limit these basic human rights to suit their own agenda. If the lesson from past conflicts teach us anything it is that conflicts never really go away. They are cyclical. We must look at the 20^th century with its history of war and genocides and learn ways of avoiding repeats. We must educate our friends and neighbours to resist the lurch to populist right-wing authoritarianism. We must also add our voices against the forces that declare refugees are not welcome, minorities are responsible for the problems caused by irresponsible billionaires, who we love is a debate and the inequality of opportunity based on birth, skin colour and economic station in life should be tolerated. The true believer in human decency must express solidarity with the downtrodden.  

In declaring ‘history is a pattern of timeless moments’, the modernist poet T S Eliot also concluded that we eventually return to where we had originally started. However, this cyclical nature of all our journeys should not dissuade us from making it a harmonious one for ourselves and our neighbours, new or old.

 

Taz Rahman has a masters in ethics and social philosophy from Cardiff University. He is a South Wales based writer and literary documentary maker. His debut poetry collection 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' was published by Seren Books and longlisted for the Laurel prize in 2024. He is widely published in leading poetry magazines and anthologies and had founded Wales' first Youtube poetry channel Just Another Poet. 

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