The Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) is honoured to be giving evidence to this Commission on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. This Agreement, and the subsequent agreements of different kinds designed to implement it, has given us 20 years of relative peace; following a disastrous, thirty...
Responding to today’s Ireland V UK judgment, CAJ Director Brian Gormally says; ‘This is a narrow and largely technical decision by the European Court of Human Rights. It considered that the new evidence was not sufficient to show that, had it been taken into account by the original court, it would have been decisive in...
The Petition of Concern mechanism has never been implemented as the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and Northern Ireland Act (NIA) intend or require. This is largely due to the way the Standing Orders of the Assembly have been drafted and applied. Over time, the Petition of Concern has come into increasing disrepute given, ironically, its...
