19. Blackburn V The Attorney General March 15, 1971

Amid great political controversy this case confirmed that there was no constitutional reason why the UK could not join the Common Market (now the European Union). Raymond Blackburn of Chiswick, in London, asked the judges as “the guardians of the British constitution” to explain the constitutional position in relation to the Government’s application in 1971 to join the Common Market. He said that the Treaty’s provisions could be validly accepted only if a new constitution was adopted with the consent of the British people. The Court of Appeal disagreed, saying that Parliament was competent to hand over some parts of its sovereignty if it wished, although this would not necessarily be binding on future parliaments.

20. R V Hudson and Taylor March 19th, 1971

In some circumstances, someone who commits a crime may have a defence if it was committed under duress. Linda Hudson and Elaine Taylor were two girls from Salford who, as witnesses at a criminal trial in Manchester, gave false evidence. Their defence on charges of perjury was that they had previously been threatened by violent men that they would be “cut up” if they told the truth. One of the men had been sitting in court when they gave their evidence. At their trial the judge directed the jury that this was no defence and they were convicted of perjury. Quashing the convictions, the Court of Appeal held that duress was a defence to all offences (except murder as principal offender, and possibly treason) if the will of the accused had been overborne by threats of death or personal injury. To be a defence, the threat had to have been “present”, which meant “effective at the moment the crime was committed”. In this case, the threats of future violence were likely to have been present. They were no less compelling just because they couldn’t be carried out in the court room itself: they could have been carried out in the streets later that evening.

TASKS

1. Which case(s) dealt with:

1. banks

2. cars

3. debts

4. electronic devices

5. escaped prisoners

6. habeas corpus

7. human error

8. international policy

9. literature

10. manslaughter

11. medicine

12. police

13. ships and other sea vessels

14. shops

15. soccer

16. sweets

17. threats

18. transport

2. Match the words to their definitions. The figure in brackets indicates the number of the passage in which the word occurs.

Annual (11) Bar (12) Bully (12) Coach (3) Compelling (20) Current (11) Dismiss (9) Endeavour (3) Fracture (2) Haemorrhage (4) Ignite (8) Immune (18) Intrinsic (5) Out of pocket (10) Precursor (1) Proffer (7) Relent (16) Retain (11) Transfusion (4) Withhold (17)

a break in a bone or other hard material a comfortable bus for carrying passengers over long distances a medical condition in which there is severe loss of blood from inside a person’s body a person or thing that comes before sb/sth similar and that leads to or influences its development belonging to or part of the real nature of sth/sb happening now having gained / lost money as a result of sth protected from sth that makes you think it is true the process of putting new blood into the body of a person or an animal to ban or prevent sb from doing sth to finally agree to sth after refusing to frighten or hurt a weaker person; to use your strength or power to make sb do sth to keep sth; to continue to have sth to offer sth to sb, by holding it out to them to refuse to give sth to sb to sack to start to burn; to make sth start to burn to try very hard to do sth yearly