The very fact that criminal cases account for around a quarter of ICLR’s annual coverage is testament to the fact that English criminal law is in a continual state of development and adjustment in the courts. For criminal practitioners, this means continual effort must be applied to keeping track of the ever-changing rules and points of procedure that crop up in practice.

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The Criminal Law Update

List of Subjects

  • CHILDREN
  • CONSPIRACY
  • CORRUPTION
  • EVIDENCE
  • EXTRADITION
  • HOMICIDE
  • HUMAN RIGHTS
  • IDENTITY DOCUMENTS
  • INDICTMENT
  • MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE
  • PLEA
  • PRACTICE
  • PROCEDURE
  • PROCEEDS OF CRIME
  • RIOT
  • SELF-DEFENCE
  • SENTENCE
  • SEXUAL OFFENCES

 

The sheer volume of material that is of potential relevance keeps on growing and the challenge is to find a way of sorting the relevant from the ephemeral. With that in mind, the purpose of this humble volume is to collect together the most significant criminal cases decided from 1 January to 31 July 2016 in one place and to draw out their essential facts and decisions on the law.

This volume has been compiled by repurposing the WLR Daily Case Summaries of law-changing cases published by ICLR free of charge over the first half of the year. Each of the 54 case summaries in this volume act as a sort of “first draft” law report headnote, setting out the core facts and holdings on the law in each case. Where necessary, the summaries alert the reader to instances in which earlier authority and legislation have played a material role in the decision of the court.

The ICLR Criminal Update came into being at the beginning of 2016 as a modest attempt to make a free to access digest of important cases available to criminal practitioners who have spent far too long battling through successive assaults on legal aid. This edition of the update builds on that earlier effort by providing far richer analysis of the selected cases and more references to the underlying transcripts and law reports.

A wide range of criminal subject matter is covered in this update. As one might expect, adjectival updates outnumber their substantive counterparts. Over the past year, ICLR has pursued an initiative to expand its coverage of criminal cases by giving more airtime to cases that traditionally would have fell below the strict threshold of reportability. As a consequence of that initiative, cases dealing with issues of sentencing and points of practice now play a greater role in ICLR’s repertoire.

The decision in early 2016 to expand The Weekly Law Reports by creating a fourth, virtual volume has been instrumental to ICLR’s increase in criminal coverage. Signified by the citation [2016] 4 WLR, the new virtual volume has enabled us to provide deeper and wider coverage cases of interest to criminal practitioners. Cases reported in the new volume are available via WestlawUK, LexisLibrary and ICLR Online along with The Law Reports and volumes 1 to 3 of The Weekly Law Reports.

A further update to this volume will be published at the beginning of 2017. In the meantime, I hope you find this update of use in practice or in study.

Daniel Hoadley, Barrister