New from @profmarkelliott.bsky.social on how the principle of legality is being treated restrictively in the High Court, following positions set by the UKSC justices. On multiple fronts the horizons of the UK judiciary's constitutional role are shrinking: publiclawforeveryone.com/2026/05/19/i...

Mr Sakila didn’t just become passively unresponsive at the scene - the video shows multiple men restraining him on the ground with their body weight, including one who knelt and then with his hands pressed down in his neck. Truly disturbing footage www.thejournal.ie/yves-sakila-...

I wrote this piece for The Morrigan on last week's #UKSCt in #Dillon on the Legacy Act & specifically the impact on #women with a focus on the narrowing of rights in #NorthernIreland, #Brexit & a 1st para reeking of colonial condescension #Feminism #FeministJudgments dflw.ie/women-in-nor...

Reading up on the Chișinău Declaration for a talk tomorrow and this is very good. If you’ve wondered what is going on with all that, this does a very good job of filling you (um, me) in: echrblog.com/open-minded-...

We did a survey of our KCL physics students on how they feel about AI in their education. Their are basically worried about what AI is doing to their brains and their learning. They feel compelled to use AI because of they are worried they will fall behind. A large number of them hate AI.

If this isn't "designed to stir up hatred" against Jews, what is? Why are the Met not arresting them?

It's me Vs Jim Allister this morning over the implications of Dillon for trans rights. There' s been a (wrong) narrowing of Art 2 by the UKSC, but on gender para 118 is key, the Annex 1 Directives should continue to have direct effect, so EU law claims remain arguable: share.google/tGsVRo0brH0Y...

Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity

Robust decision from Chamberlain J on Rupert Lowe's challenge to the parliamentary complaints process being barred on the basis of parliamentary privilege. No tears spilt for a man who fulminates about courts and runs off to them in his own interest: caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/admin/2...

Striking that X was willing to make commitments to the UK regulator, but not the EU - even though the EU decision so far does not affect content (despite what US right wing falsely claims) Of course the obvious question is whether these commitments are genuine

My take on the UKSC's Dillon judgment - it is a combination of regressive and dubious reasoning. It radically reduces the range of cases in which Art 2 is applicable, in reasoning which flies in the face of the UK Government's promises over the provision: ukconstitutionallaw.org/2026/05/14/c...

We're actually full In the Loop now. Wes Streeting maybe wanted it floated that he was contemplating resigning... www.ft.com/content/e838...

Going live in one hour, fill your boots with analysis of the UKSC's Dillon decision. Some of my comments might not be broadcast-able...

Nichola McNulty from QUB has a really important post on the Katie Simpson Review and the litany of failings it disclosed. Essential reading: dflw.ie/concealed-fe...

The 4th ed of Blackstone's Guide to the Anti-Terrorism Legislation is published today. This is the first edition in 12 years and, at times, it felt like a Sisyphean task as counter-terrorism law is nothing if not ever-changing. So it’s great to finally see this out. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Saving the UN archive on the Nakba “Their destruction would have been catastrophic … If there is ever a just and durable solution to this conflict, then this is the only evidence people can use to show there were once Palestinians living in a particular place” www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Nial Ring on Morning Ireland saying that we are all to let Bertie say whatever he wants because he brought peace to the North. I'm so shit sick of that line. It was trotted out about Mandelson for months. Immigrants didn't wreck Ireland's economy, Bertie did. Stop with the great peacemaker guff.

One of the most shocking things I found while reporting this story was that there is a statutory defence for children who commit offences as a result of exploitation, but it has never been used in the 10 years since it was introduced.

I love that this still has the power to shock. Blair Mayne as another prominent example. I spent my university years being intermittently called Ted because I sound just like Dermot Morgan (reader, I don't). Is putting up with this is a sign of generosity, or should I just have told folk to do one?

The UK Govt made promises to NI over rights after Brexit and when the going got tough, denied they existed and got a compliant Supreme Court to help. The Dillon judgment plays into so many tropes about how little NI's place in "the Union" matters. Me in Slugger: sluggerotoole.com/2026/05/13/s...

It's almost as if the Legacy Commission was not really set up to deliver truth recovery for people in NI, but to end legal avenues for redress that were embarrassing to a government in London. It's such a wonder that this story isn't getting news attention outside NI: share.google/uRk9SBtEzbAN...

See how far we've come 🫣

Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?

Manchester MenReg and the EHRLR are jointly hosting a webinar, "Reflections on Dillon", on the UKSC's Dillon judgment, on 14 May at 1pm. We will have expert commentary from Prof Colin Murray, Dr Eleni Frantziou and Samuel Willis. All are welcome to join. teams.microsoft.com/meet/3787814...

The ICRIR report has been released. The legacy process is being fundamentally mismanaged and insufficiently funded, but victims & families are still being forced down this path. It would be hard to deliberately create a body less appropriate to addressing the conflict: share.google/K0WQsF3R8TuK...

My paper “Bureaucracy and Distrust: the Civil Service in the Constitution” has been published in Current Legal Problems. It looks at the UK civil service’s constitutional foundations, and how it might respond to a populist govt. It's open access. currentlegalproblems.org/article/bure...

Wish this wasn't an evergreen post...

For ICON-S Dublin attendees this year, there will be a roundtable on my book, Judicial Individuality on the UKSC, at 2:30pm on Day 1 of the event (29 June). Join me, @aoifemod.bsky.social, @colinmurray.bsky.social and @anuragdeb.bsky.social for a discussion on judicial behaviour on the UKSC

It's kinda tragic that in the Telegraph's imagination academia and the civil service are both tirelessly pushing woke agendas and simultaneously an utterly idle leisure class. Imagine the wokery we could perpetuate if we just put our backs into it.

The Times Higher keeps giving space to GC commentary on the Sussex v OfS case even if it bears no relation to actual law. It doesn't matter that these folk can spout (dubious) reasons why the OfS might have acted, judicial review is about the decision that was taken. share.google/WyIeAyQCbRFF...

The sheer horror of it. Road racing in NI is a blood sport in which riders regularly die, but because they are working class men this gets less news attention than the death of a horse in the Grand National. There is no such thing as total safety in motorsport, but the level of risk is grotesque.

I'm here for the evening with Roddy Doyle, really. The rest of Belfast I can't vouch for.

A quick fire comment: the UKCS decision in Dillon is woeful. So much so, that together with For Women Scotland will define the 'legacy' of the Reed court. I'll mention only the Windsor Framework ground of appeal: the Supreme Court denies direct effect to s2(1) of the WF because the rights in the /1

The Dillon case is available at the following link. It effectively reduces the Windsor Framework's rights and equality protections, as litigable measures, to the Six Annex 1 Directives. Any broader UK Government pledges are just ashes in the mouth: supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc...

Having spent the last half hour furiously pressing F5, here are my expectations as the Dillon judgment drops ...

“what happens at the BL is, mostly, the wrong kind of research. It’s about the dull old humanities, not the cutting-edge sciences. It mostly looks backwards, not forwards. So it’s regarded, not least by our political leaders, as a backwater.”

Out of roughly a million panels on the ICON Conference this year, I've put together the one panel that mentions Brexit in the title. You might think this means that the party has moved on. I'm here to tell you at length that the core-periphery relations now in play will continue to define Europe...

Ah lads, we've been doing this academia thing all wrong...

The public law of Lord Reed's Supreme Court: We made a desert and called it constitutionalism...

Too much of the conversation around online disinformation imagines it's *all* "state-sponsored" or "sophisticated". In practice, smart, online young people in lower-income countries are behind *huge* volumes of damaging disinfo. Surely we can find ways to put their skills to better use?

Improving Government in Northern Ireland: Towards a Programme for Reform A new working paper by @alanwhysall.bsky.social calls for a debate, and considers initial ideas, to improve the performance of Northern Ireland's political institutions. Read it 👇

University of Hertfordshire closes a swathe of Humanities courses, accelerating the sweeping tide against Human-centred disciples in the UK. Because understanding humans is so yesterday today. With such happy consequences, as we see when we look around us.

Today's ECtHR decision in Yasak v Turkiye is really important - the Grand Chamber asserts the importance of Art 7 in strict liability offences of banned-group membership. Judge Úna Ní Raifeartaigh's dissent outlines the leap into substantive criminal law involved: hudoc.echr.coe.int?i=001-250157

Today the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down its judgment in Yasak v Turkiye. The Court considered whether the applicant's conviction for being a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation breached the Convention. hudoc.echr.coe.int?i=001-250157 1/5

You know, I'm pretty confident that whatever happens, this clamour won't. When your pitch is that the safety of democracy relies upon a relic of feudalism your account of a modern democracy is broken. And it's pretty brazenly wrong to say that only the party in government chooses peers.

That there is no deep push back or outrage over this just speaks to how profoundly NI is othered in GB politics. There are no votes in it. There's only forget and move on. share.google/PbXA5GOlxyQO...

Happy Lá Bealtaine - the swallows have arrived and summer's on the way 🔥 Prints: www.ciaraioch.com/artprints/p/...

On a day when all the headlines lead on British values, there's a powerful irony that there is next to no coverage on national BBC news programmes of the Springhill Inquest findings. These values are in short supply when families have to fight for decades for justice: share.google/7TAptGHwQJBV...

The UK Supreme Court has been delivering some hugely important decisions for NI law in recent months. Next Thursday comes Dillon, which encompasses both Brexit and the Legacy of the NI Conflict. I have pretty low expectations based on the hearings, but here's hoping: supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2...