James Hand

Everyone knows the brains of the operation was Alan Brock.

Figure 2 from The IJDL at 30: Some bibliographic snapshot analyses to mark the 100th issue journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

#IWD2026

Sounds like high turnout in the by election. If it beats turnout from the last general (46.8%) it will be the first time that's happened in 40 years.

Thanks @colmocinneide.bsky.social for your inspiring talk about the past, present, and future of equality law @unisouthampton.bsky.social. There has been positive feedback from the audience. Hopefully some will have gone away with renewed resolve to shape that future. #equality #law #annual #lecture

Met apologises to Commons speaker for sharing tipoff with Mandelson’s lawyers Exclusive: Police meet Lindsay Hoyle to explain error after Hoyle shared tip that Mandelson planned to flee UK

It is very funny how Mandelson’s fury over his arrest has led to the Met apologising profusely, but to someone else entirely.

CJEU, equality law

Court judgment due on St Patrick's Day - can an employee be fired because they have left the Catholic church?
Details of the case - infocuria.curia.europa.eu/tabs/affair?...

We’re advertising for a Teaching Fellow / Senior Teaching Fellow with in-depth knowledge of at least one of the following SQE practice areas

Business Law & Practice
Criminal Litigation
Dispute Resolution and Civil Litigation
Wills and Estate Administration
Property Law & Practice

The General Legal Advice Clinic www.port.ac.uk/collaborate/... at UoP has been running since 2013 helping over 200 clients who live or work in the Portsmouth area each year with free and confidential advice

4 Textbooks by UoPLaw authors published last year:

Here you go again

The Spelling of our Tongue was in the main ſettled ere the eighteenth Century, & the Grammar has ſuffer'd but little Alteration ſince. Yet before this happy Settlement, things were exceeding ſtrange.

LGR, SDSs, SPBs & Other TLAs I’ve written before about the need to Keep It Simple Stupid. The restructuring of the English planning system, as described in my 19 December 2025 blog post Framework Good Work, might turn out to b…

New blog post, LGR, SDSs, SPBs & Other TLAs

simonicity.com/2026/02/22/l...

With over 40K #dataprotection complaints but just 2 fines totalling only £3.8m and no UK #GDPR enforcement notices in 2024/25, where has scrutiny and oversight of the ICO been? Pleased to post new working paper on this, also exploring avenues for positive intervention papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The case of the fake references in an ethics journal Many would-be whistleblowers write to us about papers with nonexistent references, possibly hallucinated by artificial intelligence. One reader recently alerted us to fake references in … an ethics…

I'd say contact the publisher's ethics team (or go via the editors), e.g. retractionwatch.com/2025/12/02/f... (editors and reviewers watch out for things but things can slip through)

The Limits of Positive Action under the Equality Act 2010 – by James Hand Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay 1. INTRODUCTION Some British media outlets ran stories in April 2025 on how a regional Police Force (West Yorkshire) has put ‘applications from white Brits…

There’s also Turner-Robson v Chief Constable of Thames Valley (2024) ET 3314825/2022 (discussed in uklabourlawblog.com/2025/05/08/t...) - I don’t know if @giffordhead.co.uk would be interested in a blog on the Hackney case by my colleague Michael Connolly but if so web.archive.org/web/20210423...

This misrepresentation is maddening: bsky.app/profile/sean...

Just two reported cases on s.159 by my count uklabourlawblog.com/2025/05/08/t...

Reducing the 80,000 backlog of cases needs action now - not 2027/2028 as is the necessity of primary legislation to reduce jury trials.
Previously I’ve referred to IFG findings:a single Judge trial will save less than 2% of court time (if estimate of a Judge only trial being 20% quicker is correct)

Withdrawing a peerage nomination The question of whether a peerage, having been announced, can be withdrawn has recently arisen, with Downing Street apparently believing that this was not possible.  As the Clerks of the House of L…

Is it possible to withdraw a peerage nomination? There is a precedent. nortonview.wordpress.com/2026/02/15/w...

Come, friendly points, and fail at Ely.
It isn't fit for humans, really.

Vol 26(1) of the IJDL (Mar 2026) has been published online

journals.sagepub.com...

Following on from Vol 25 which marked the 30th anniversary of the journal in various ways including by being the biggest volume, Vol 26(1) is the biggest single issue to date (with >50% Open Access)

#IJDL #Equality

The missing line on this chart is the growing value of the national minimum wage. Sustained policy action means that very low pay is now illegal, and that has an impact on the aggregate graduate premium.

We're hiring in Psychology at Portsmouth Uni (apps due next Fri)!
Teaching Fellow:
TF: mss.port.ac.uk/ce0732li_web...
Perhaps place that enabled me to become British (via hire for @uoppald.bsky.social) can become your home too?
(Pictured: UK passport that arrived yesterday alongside my US passport)

Cabinet league table – favourability (not preferred leader) among Labour members: Survation for LabourList labourlist.org/2026/02/cabi...

A brief update to previous substack posts on KC/QC appointments

Not necesarily fully analogous but on Spads www.gov.uk/government/p... and www.gov.uk/government/p...

and Sedwill assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f05fc...

Tonight feels v much like June 2009 when James Purnell quit the Brown cabinet saying Brown was going to lose the election, & everyone thought it was the start of a coup. (Including me, who was on a family holiday & cut it short to go back to the office, in order for nothing to actually happen)

There’s a trend among recent PMs of having a poor relationship with and/or not really understanding what their backbenchers’ expectations are and how they view their role (and how that seems to have shifted among backbenchers of all parties in recent years)

An interesting lecture from Lord Sales which includes, among other topics, discussion of the Influence of public law ideas and values on private law development and the relationship between the common law and ECHR

supremecourt.uk/uploads/spee...

1/5

Beyond reasonable delay: efficiency in London magistrates’ courts - Transform Justice

Govt's court reforms have focussed on crown court backlogs, but they will put more pressure on magistrates courts that also have record backlogs. A great new @transformjustice.bsky.social report looks at the causes of poor productivity in the magistrates