In Pormes v The Netherlands (application no. 25402/14), the European Court of Human Rights has approved the deportation of a man who had lived in the Netherlands between the ages of four and 29, on the basis of multiple convictions for indecent assault. Mr Pormes had a troubled upbringing. He...
On 4 August 2020, the Home Office issued new guidance to its civil servants on how to respond to immigration appeals that the department has lost. The 18-page document can be found here (pdf download). For the most part, the guidance is welcome. Anyone who has ever won an appeal...
The case of JH (Palestinian Territories) v Upper Tribunal [2020] EWCA Civ 919 builds on the principle that the Home Office can be found liable for expenses in Cart/Eba type judicial review cases. The Court of Appeal has confirmed that the issue of costs should not be decided by the...
Scottish litigation would not be the same unless we had fancy words for everything. “Judge”? – too plain. We have “Lord Ordinary”. “Appeal”? Pah! We have the “reclaiming motion”. “Court of Appeal”? Too simple. We have the “Inner House”. This brief lesson on Scots litigation terminology is by way of...
Reading judgments from the Upper Tribunal on the EEA Regulations often feels like going back in time. A lot of the recent case law has clarified points of law in favour of migrants but almost all have come far too late to be useful. The latest case of Chowdhury (Extended...
Chucking people out of a country they were born in is hard. It usually takes something pretty dramatic or pretty terrible — or both, as in the case of Azerkane v The Netherlands (application no. 3138/16). The facts Mr Azerkane was born in the Netherlands to Moroccan parents. His parents...
“Devani” in my native language of Punjabi/Urdu roughly translates as “crazy” or “mad”. An apt name for the case of Devani [2020] EWCA Civ 612, because it’s never promising when a judgment starts by saying “this appeal has a complicated and unsatisfactory procedural history”. Page contentsAsylum appeal accidentally dismissed“Slip rule”...
A quick note on this Advocate General’s Opinion fresh from Luxembourg on the Qualification Directive. The case is C‑255/19 Secretary of State for the Home Department v OA. The Qualification Directive sets out the criteria for determining asylum claims in the European Union. The issue in this case was around...
Tribunals that decide whether someone is entitled to benefits often have to grapple with our nightmarish immigration law. HK v SSWP (PC) [2020] UKUT 73 (AAC) is one such case from the Administrative Appeals Chamber. It effectively confirms that a British citizen who returns to the UK with family members...
Two important (but completely different) points arise from the Upper Tribunal’s decision in MH (review; slip rule; church witnesses) Iran [2020] UKUT 125 (IAC), one concerning religious conversion cases and the other concerning clerical errors in a written decision. “Expert” evidence on religious conversion The first is quite a significant...
