Posted: 09 February 2010 at 16:34 | IP Logged

David

Sorry, I did not see your post until now.  I use a word document for making notes for wiki, so it is handy for checking and making links to be posted.

What I do is:

Copy and paste the url onto the word document;

Make sure the curser is at the end of the url and press the spacebar, that should make the url live;

Hover the curser over the live url and right click; a short menu will appear;

Click on 'Edit hyperlink', a dialogue box will open;

At the top of the dialogue box you will see the url and to the left 'Text to Display';

Delete the url and type the text you would like to display.

Sounds a bit complicated but it's not once you have done it!

Cheers

Posted: 10 February 2010 at 08:47 | IP Logged

Thanks David

I see a distinction, albeit perhaps of not much importance between WALSH and cash forfeiture;  that being that WALSH had a substantial criminal record and was found by the Judge to have a Criminal Lifestyle; so I suppose it could be argued that the civil recovery order against him could be viewed as part of the sentencing for his previous crimes; whereas many people subjected to cash forfeitures have not been found to have a criminal lifestyle and have no criminal convictions?

Peter

Posted: 03 March 2010 at 11:02 | IP Logged

62. Where does this leave the constitutional position which I have stated? Mr Shrimpton would say that Factortame (No 1) was wrongly decided; and since the point was not argued, there is scope, within the limits of our law of precedent, to depart from it and to hold that implied repeal may bite on the ECA as readily as upon any other statute. I think that would be a wrong turning. My reasons are these. In the present state of its maturity the common law has come to recognise that there exist rights which should properly be classified as constitutional or fundamental: see for example such cases as Simms [2000] 2 AC 115 per Lord Hoffmann at 131, Pierson v Secretary of State [1998] AC 539, Leech [1994] QB 198, Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers Ltd. [1993] AC 534, and Witham [1998] QB 575. And from this a further insight follows. We should recognise a hierarchy of Acts of Parliament: as it were "ordinary" statutes and "constitutional" statutes. The two categories must be distinguished on a principled basis. In my opinion a constitutional statute is one which (a) conditions the legal relationship between citizen and State in some general, overarching manner, or (b) enlarges or diminishes the scope of what we would now regard as fundamental constitutional rights. (a) and (b) are of necessity closely related: it is difficult to think of an instance of (a) that is not also an instance of (b). The special status of constitutional statutes follows the special status of constitutional rights. Examples are the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights 1689, the Act of Union, the Reform Acts which distributed and enlarged the franchise, the HRA, the Scotland Act 1998 and the Government of Wales Act 1998. The ECA clearly belongs in this family. It incorporated the whole corpus of substantive Community rights and obligations, and gave overriding domestic effect to the judicial and administrative machinery of Community law. It may be there has never been a statute having such profound effects on so many dimensions of our daily lives. The ECA is, by force of the common law, a constitutional statute.

63. Ordinary statutes may be impliedly repealed. Constitutional statutes may not. For the repeal of a constitutional Act or the abrogation of a fundamental right to be effected by statute, the court would apply this test: is it shown that the legislature's actual – not imputed, constructive or presumed – intention was to effect the repeal or abrogation? I think the test could only be met by express words in the later statute, or by words so specific that the inference of an actual determination to effect the result contended for was irresistible. The ordinary rule of implied repeal does not satisfy this test. Accordingly, it has no application to constitutional statutes. I should add that in my judgment general words could not be supplemented, so as to effect a repeal or significant amendment to a constitutional statute, by reference to what was said in Parliament by the minister promoting the Bill pursuant to Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 593. A constitutional statute can only be repealed, or amended in a way which significantly affects its provisions touching fundamental rights or otherwise the relation between citizen and State, by unambiguous words on the face of the later statute.