Word: lawing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...court left it up to Britain to bring its contempt law into line with the principles of a free press. There is no sanction if Britain does not, other than international embarrassment...
...government never investigated the calamity. Antiquated British laws made it difficult for victimized families to sue Distillers; the more than 350 who did were provided with lawyers who, in many cases, knew next to nothing about personal injury cases. Because of the law's delay and Distillers' refusal to offer more than niggardly settlements to the victims, the case dragged on into the '70s. All the while, the British press was banned from saying anything about it. The reason: under British "contempt of court" law, judges quickly impose fines and jail terms on editors and reporters...
...striking a deal: it agreed to show its final-and most damning-article to the government before publishing it. That article, detailing how Distillers had been negligent in selling the dangerous drug in the first place, was firmly banned by a lower court. The paper appealed, but the Law Lords who act as Britain's highest court refused to bend the contempt law, leaving the Sunday Times nowhere else to turn to get the story published...
Final vindication for the Sunday Times came from the Court of Human Rights last week. The 11-to-9 decision stopped short of saying that Britain's law of contempt itself violates the broadly worded guarantee of free expression in the charter, which also recognizes the need to protect the "authority of the judiciary." But banning the final Thalidomide article simply was not "necessary," said the Strasbourg judges. In this case, they added, the public's right to know was more important...
Britain, in fact, is the commission's best client. In the past three years Strasbourg has received 398 complaints against the British government, more than against any other country. Unlike many other European countries, England does not recognize the European human rights convention as national law. Its own constitution is largely unwritten; there is no bill of rights set above the power of Parliament. That makes it more difficult to persuade a British court that the government has trespassed on individual rights. And it helps explain why so many Britons turn to Strasbourg for redress...