A Lawyer Talks

Joshua Rozenberg
  • 0.0 (0)
  • News Commentary
  • Updated Daily

Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon) is Britain's most experienced commentator on the law. This new podcast complements the daily updates he publishes on A Lawyer Writes. rozenberg.substack.com

  1. 5d ago

    Chemical weapons

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Sudan’s military leaders built a stockpile of chemical weapons that they tried to conceal after chlorine bombs had been used against rebel forces, the Washington Post reported on 5 September. Videos, documents and intercepted communications portray a secretive Sudanese military unit said to have produced chlorine-based munitions for use against the paramilitary group fighting the army for control of the country, the New York Times added on the same day. The allegations, attributed to unnamed Middle Eastern security and intelligence officials, have been denied by Sudan but are regarded as credible by Western observers. Although they deal with events in 2024 and sanctions were subsequently imposed by the United States, no action appears to have been taken to enforce Sudan’s obligations under an international treaty on chemical weapons that came into force nearly 30 years ago. That shows the weakness of international law and, in particular, the United Nations as it is currently constituted, I was told last week by Santiago Oñate Laborde OBE (hon), a former Mexican politician, former ambassador of Mexico to the United Kingdom and former legal adviser to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — the international body responsible for implementing the chemical weapons convention. Oñate (pictured above) was speaking on A Lawyer Talks. My weekly podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can listen to a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

  2. Sep 22

    The future of law

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com We are not living in an era of change but a change of era, writes Professor Richard Susskind in the 30th anniversary edition of his classic book on the future of law. Describing the emergence of artificial general intelligence — AGI — as the single most significant technological advance in the history of humanity, he tells me we could rapidly, see the development of systems “that are unfathomably more capable than us”. Not planning for AGI now would, at the very least, amount to “a dereliction of duty” by senior lawyers. As a lawyer who has been writing about artificial intelligence for 45 years, Susskind (pictured) is uniquely placed to take the long view. I had the advantage of having spoken to him when I wrote about the need for regulation at the beginning of last week and again at the end of last week. He had recorded an interview with me shortly before concerns were expressed by researchers, by industry leaders and even by the King. Sir Ed Davey is to call today for a global non-proliferation treaty to halt the development of super-intelligent AI when he makes the leader’s speech at the Liberal Democrat conference, the Guardian reports. But Susskind was, of course, ahead of the news — not just when recording A Lawyer Talks but in writing The Future of Law – Reflections and Predictions, to be published by OUP on Thursday. His interview can be heard now. My weekly podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can listen to a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

    The future of law

  3. Sep 14

    City lawyers take on AI

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com New legislation is needed to regulate the use of artificial intelligence, a parliamentary committee recommends today. The joint committee on human rights says the law should prohibit the development and provision of very powerful AI systems known as artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence. MPs and peers say these advanced systems — which I’ll be exploring in next week’s podcast — risk causing widespread and very serious harm, including the capacity to evade effective human control. In the meantime, says the committee’s well-timed report, legislation should ban the use of AI in ways that are inconsistent with respect for human rights, such as subliminal techniques, emotional inference and inappropriate use of profiling or biometric data. No legislation has been introduced even though the party’s manifesto in 2024 promised that a Labour government would “ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models”. In the King’s speech that year, ministers said they would “seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models”. The use of AI by lawyers will be on the agenda of a conference tomorrow being held by the City of London Law Society and the City of London Corporation at Guildhall. Though much of the meeting will be closed to reporters, Colin Passmore KC (hon), chair of the City of London Law Society, was happy to discuss the challenges facing corporate lawyers in an interview for A Lawyer Talks. Passmore (pictured) told me last week of his concerns about AI, particularly what he regards as its current unreliability. He also responded to some of the ethical concerns emerging from the Post Office scandal that I raised with John Hyde in last week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks. My regular podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

    City lawyers take on AI

  4. Sep 11

    Indefensible

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Who’s to blame for the Post Office scandal that saw innocent postmasters sent to prison for crimes which never happened? The lawyers accused of keeping Post Office executives in the dark? Or the Post Office executives accused of setting up lawyers to fail? Why didn’t the regulators step in? Are they doing enough now? Or must we look again at the system of general counsel and in-house lawyers that seems to suit large corporations so well? Those are among the issues explored in a new book by John Hyde, who covered the public inquiry into the multi-million-pound fiasco for the Law Society Gazette. Indefensible — how lawyers failed to stop the Post Office scandal will be published next Tuesday by Bristol University Press. This week, Hyde (pictured) agreed to share his insights with me on the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My regular podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

  5. Aug 27

    Court in a box

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com A criminal court built over the course of a weekend “worked absolutely perfectly”, according to inspectors who examined the UK’s military court service. Because courts martial may sit anywhere in the world, the service has a fully equipped “court in a box” that it can set up in any suitable building. Anthony Rogers, chief inspector of HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, was invited by the military court service to assess its work. His inspectorate’s report is now published. In an interview for A Lawyer Talks, Rogers (pictured) told me that there were lessons that the civilian courts could learn from how cases were tried by the military — though he stressed that the numbers of military trials was just a tiny fraction of those heard in the Crown Court. We discussed the differences between military trial and civilian trials — and how decisions were taken on which system should be used if both had jurisdiction. Inspectors found the military court service to be an effective, well-led and highly regarded organisation that had a clear operational purpose, visible leadership and strong working relationships with other parts of the justice system. The inspectorate’s main recommendation was that it should adopt a single, secure digital court listing and case progression system in place of its current arrangements. My regular podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

    Court in a box

  6. Aug 17

    Judging genocide

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Few British lawyers have a better understanding of genocide than Sir Howard Morrison KCMG CBE KC. In 2016, as a judge of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, he voted to convict the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić on one charge of genocide and acquit him on another. On the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, the international lawyer said he was concerned to see the legal definition of genocide being watered down in public discourse. The main purpose of our interview was to discuss Morrison’s latest appointment as co-chair of the newly established Council for the Examination of Atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For three decades, he told me, the Congolese people had endured atrocities on a scale reminiscent of the darkest chapters of the modern history. And yet the world has hardly registered this. The council’s task was to raise international awareness, to make an accurate historical record and — “hopefully, eventually” — to provide reparations for victims. The Democratic Republic of Congo — DRC for short — had suffered two civil wars between 1996 and 2003, following the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. During just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were systematically killed by Hutu militias in Rwanda. But Tutsi forces then seized control and some two million Hutus, including civilians and some of those responsible for the genocide, fled across the border to what is now the DRC. The conflict there has worsened in recent years. As Morrison told me, the latest international violence involves a battle for eastern DRC’s huge mineral resources. International Criminal Court My picture shows Morrison in his robes as a judge of the International Criminal Court, where he sat from 2012 to 2021. He told me last week he had been disappointed by the way the court had handled the allegations of sexual misconduct against its former prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, that led to Khan’s dismissal last month. Morrison did not believe the lengthy process had been fair or impartial. More generally, the court had not achieved everything it might have done during its first quarter-century, he thought, because some of the world’s “big players” had chosen not to join it. As one of its former judges, Morrison took the view that “mature democracies” had nothing to fear from a court of last resort that was not allowed to intervene when countries were dealing properly with allegations against their own citizens. My regular podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

  7. Aug 12

    Getting out of the cohabit

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com If two people live together for a while — and perhaps share a child — does that give them the same sort of rights as a married couple or civil partners? Most of my readers will know that the law of England and Wales does not recognise so-called common law marriage. But should it? You have three days left to tell the government whether you think ministers should introduce what a former justice secretary called “some of the biggest reforms to family law in decades”. As I pointed out in June, David Lammy’s consultation paper on cohabitation had been slipped out with little fanfare on a Friday afternoon earlier that month. Despite my best efforts, new research by the market research company Survation suggests that most people haven’t heard of his plans. Perhaps that’s what the Ministry of Justice was quietly hoping for. “The fact that some may think they have rights is no justification for taking away the liberty of others,” Baroness Deech DBE KC (hon) said in a House of Lords debate last month. Responding to the government consultation, the cross-bench peer said that reform should support needy people while preserving the equally important principles of consent, personal autonomy and legal certainty. Deech (pictured) explains her thinking on the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My regular podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

    Getting out of the cohabit

  8. Jul 28

    Cells for kids

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Children aged from 10 to 17 are being arrested by the police and detained overnight in adult custody suites because more appropriate responses are not available in England and Wales, a major research project has found. The researchers recommend clearer guidance for police officers and a presumption in favour of less intrusive alternatives. Six out of 10 children arrested by response officers — even for something as trivial as a domestic tantrum — are released with no further action. But the researchers have found that, far from being a deterrent, detaining children in custody acts as a gateway to the youth justice system. The researchers conclude that the government’s commitment to a “child first” principle — treating young suspects as a children first and offenders second — will remain no more than a principle for as long as decisions on whether a child enters the criminal justice system are made by police officers who lack the training, guidance, information, institutional support and input from partner agencies needed to make decisions in a fully-informed way. Academics worked collaboratively on the study with Greater Manchester Police, the Metropolitan Police, Surrey Police and South Wales Police. Four forces have already accepted an earlier recommendation from the project about the length of time that children should be detained by the police. Although the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 allows adults and children to be detained for up to 24 hours, those forces now work on the basis of a 12-hour maximum for children aged from 10 to 17. In Surrey, this has reduced their average detention period from about 11 hours to just over 7½ hours. The research was led by Dr Vicky Kemp from the University of Nottingham and Dr Miranda Bevan of King’s College London. Their report — Children and Policing in England and Wales: Adopting a Child First Approach — is supported by the Nuffield Foundation and was published last week. I interviewed Kemp (pictured) yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My podcast, in which you can also hear from children who spoke to the researchers, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

    Cells for kids
See All (98)

About

Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon) is Britain's most experienced commentator on the law. This new podcast complements the daily updates he publishes on A Lawyer Writes. rozenberg.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Joshua Rozenberg
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    98
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Joshua Rozenberg
  • Show Website
    A Lawyer Talks

You Might Also Like