Shawcross Doctrine
The Shawcross principle is an idea in the United Kingdom's Westminster system of government, whereby the Attorney-General is to be left to his or her own devices and judgments regarding whether or not to establish criminal proceedings. It relates to political pressure and cabinet government. History What we know as the Shawcross principle was the subject of debate in the UK Parliament on 29 January 1951. In a lengthy defence of his conduct regarding an illegal strike, Attorney-General Shawcross cited hundreds of years of precedent as to the firm foundation of his actions. The principle (or doctrine) states that the Attorney General: * must take into account matters of public interest, * that assistance from cabinet colleagues must be limited to advice, * that responsibility for the decision is that of the Attorney General alone, and * that the government is not to put pressure on him or her. The 1964 Rivard affair in Canada caused the sitting Attorney-General, Guy Favreau, to r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Katharine Gun
Katharine Teresa Gun (''née'' Harwood) (born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to ''The Observer'', concerning a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on diplomats from member states of the 2003 Security Council. The diplomats were due to vote on a second United Nations resolution on the prospective 2003 invasion of Iraq. Early life Katharine Harwood moved to Taiwan in 1977 with her parents, Paul and Jan Harwood. Her father had studied Chinese at Durham University and now teaches at Tunghai University in the city of Taichung, central Taiwan. She has a younger brother who teaches in Taiwan. After spending her childhood in Taiwan, where she attended Morrison Academy until the age of 16, Katharine returned to Britain to study for her A-levels at Moira House School, a girls' boarding school in Eastbourne. Her upbringing later led her to desc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Constitution Of The United Kingdom
The constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document, thus it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched; the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom recognises that there are constitutional principles, including parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy, and upholding international law. The Supreme Court also recognises that some Acts of Parliament have special constitutional status, and are therefore part of the constitution. These include Magna Carta, which in 1215 required the King to call a "common counsel" (now called Parliament) to represent people, to hold courts in a fixed place, to guarantee fair trials, to guarantee f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parliamentary Procedure
Parliamentary procedure is the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Its object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of interest to the organization and thus to arrive at the sense or the will of the majority of the assembly upon these questions. Self-governing organizations follow parliamentary procedure to debate and reach group decisions, usually by vote, with the least possible friction. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other English-speaking countries, parliamentary procedure is often called ''chairmanship'', ''chairing'', the ''law of meetings'', ''procedure at meetings'', the ''conduct of meetings'', or the ''standing orders''. In the United States, it is referred to as ''parliamentary law'', ''parliamentary practice'', ''legislative procedure'', ''rules of order'', or ''Robert's rules of order''. Rules of order consist of rules written by the body itself (often re ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wong Yan Lung
Wong Yan-lung, GBM, SC (; born 1963) is a barrister in Hong Kong who served as the second Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong between 20 October 2005 and 30 June 2012. Early years Wong grew up in a small flat in Tai Wong Street East ( 大王東街) in Wan Chai. He sold ice cream with his father for a monthly income of HK$300-HK$400. Wong graduated from secondary school at Queen's College in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. His top marks meant that he secured scholarships every year while studying at the College. In the 1980s, the family moved to Wah Fu Estate in Aberdeen. However, his father continued selling ice cream until Wong returned from studying in England. He read law at Magdalene College, Cambridge while on a Prince Philip Scholarship. Career Wong undertook pupillage with Andrew Li, and was the latter's last ever pupil. In 1987, he was called to both the Bar of England & Wales and the Bar of Hong Kong. He was appointed a Senior Counsel in 2002. He sat as a Deputy High C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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SNC-Lavalin Affair
The SNC-Lavalin affair () was a political scandal involving attempted political interference with the justice system by the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). The Parliament of Canada's Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion found that Trudeau improperly influenced then Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to intervene in an ongoing criminal case against Quebec-based construction company SNC-Lavalin by offering a deferred prosecution agreement. The affair became public when ''The Globe and Mail'' published an article uncovering the allegations on 7 February 2019, shortly after Wilson-Raybould had been shuffled to another cabinet position as Minister of Veterans Affairs. Four days later, Ethics Commissioner Dion announced he would investigate the allegations. Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet later that day. This was followed by the resignation of Gerald Butts, the Principal Secretary to Trudeau. This ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jody Wilson-Raybould
Jody Wilson-Raybould (born March 23, 1971), also known by her initials JWR and by her Kwak’wala name Puglaas, is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who served as the member of Parliament (MP) for the British Columbia (BC) riding of Vancouver Granville from 2015 to 2021. She was initially elected as a member of the Liberal Party – serving as justice minister and attorney general from 2015 to 2019, and briefly as veterans minister and associate national defence minister in 2019 – until she was expelled from caucus amid the SNC-Lavalin affair. She continued to sit in Parliament as an Independent and was reelected in 2019, but did not run in 2021. She published a political memoir in 2021. Before entering federal politics, she was a BC provincial Crown prosecutor, a treaty commissioner and regional chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations. Early life and education Wilson-Raybould's mother is a Euro-Canadian and her father is a descendant of the Musgamagw Tsawata ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Justin Trudeau
Justin Pierre James Trudeau ( , ; born December 25, 1971) is a Canadian politician who is the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada. He has served as the prime minister of Canada since 2015 and as the leader of the Liberal Party since 2013. Trudeau is the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history after Joe Clark; he is also the first to be the child or other relative of a previous holder of the post, as the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau was born in Ottawa and attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. He graduated from McGill University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature, then in 1998 acquired a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of British Columbia. After graduating he taught at the secondary school level in Vancouver, before relocating back to Montreal in 2002 to further his studies. He was chair for the youth charity Katimavik and director of the not-for-profit Canadian Avalanche Association. In 2006, he was appointed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jack Straw
John Whitaker Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015. Straw was born in Essex and educated at Oaklands School, where his mother worked as a teacher, and later at Brentwood School. He studied Law at the University of Leeds before having a career as a barrister. He served as an adviser to cabinet minister Barbara Castle and was selected to succeed her as MP for the Blackburn constituency when she stood down at the 1979 United Kingdom general election. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice throughout the Brown ministry. Straw is one of only three individuals to have served in Cabinet ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Peter Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith
Peter Henry Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith (born 5 January 1950) is a British barrister and a former Attorney General for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland. On 22 June 2007, Goldsmith announced his resignation which took effect on 27 June 2007, the same day that Prime Minister Tony Blair, stepped down. Goldsmith was the longest serving Labour Attorney General. He is currently a Partner and head of European litigation practice at US law firm Debevoise & Plimpton and Vice Chairperson of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre. Biography Goldsmith was born in Liverpool, Lancashire (now Merseyside), and is of Jewish descent. He was educated at Quarry Bank School before reading law at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and University College London. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1972, practising from Fountain Court Chambers in London. He took silk in 1987 and became a deputy High Court judge in 1994 and he was elected the youngest ever chairman of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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GCHQ
Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primarily based at "The Doughnut" in the suburbs of Cheltenham, GCHQ is the responsibility of the country's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Foreign Secretary), but it is not a part of the Foreign Office and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary. GCHQ was originally established after the First World War as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and was known under that name until 1946. During the Second World War it was located at Bletchley Park, where it was responsible for breaking the German Enigma codes. There are two main components of the GCHQ, the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO), which is responsible for gathering information, and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), whi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |