Civil liberties

Over the past two days there's been two important court decisions from a civil rights perspective:

1. Yesterday, an anti-war protestor was convicted for protesting within 1 km of Parilament without prior approval (Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005). What's worse is the Magistrate said the statute didn't violate the Human Right Act! She was given a conditional discharge. Let's hope it gets overturned on appeal... See also the other links in the Illegal Protest special report, as well as the always informative Parliament Protest blog. I've previously told Distillated that the reason we need jury trials is for laws like this - no jury is ever going to convict someone of protesting their government, especially when it's a peaceful protest, while a Magistrate will convict someone, as they just look at the law itself, not the wider aspects. This probably explains Labour's war on jury trials.
2. Today the House of Lords ruled 7-0 (see here for judgement) that "evidence" gained from torture can't be used in UK courts (thank fuck!). It shows how much society's standards have dropped that this case ever had to get to the Lords.