Richard III remains found & identified

[Janet Ashton]

I doubt very much the legal challenge has much of a chance but hey might be surprised

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/king-richard-iii-permission-judgment.pdf :-)

[Kalafrana]

This is a very interesting use of judicial review, which I'm going to use on my new students when they arrive in a couple of weeks, but I don't think this application will succeed.

Ann

[Janet Ashton]

This is a very interesting use of judicial review, which I'm going to use on my new students when they arrive in a couple of weeks, but I don't think this application will succeed.

Ann

But...I am not expert in legal terms, but surely the application already HAS succeeded? The Judicial Review has been allowed.

We don't know the results of the Review itself yet - and the judge is recommending that te case be heard by an advisory committee of experts rather than turn into a legal tussle - but the application for Judicial Review itself has been allowed on grounds that Leicester University and the Ministry of Justice have failed to consult interested parties and are using precedent that does not apply here.

[Kalafrana]

I will have to read the transcript in detail. I am currently away from home with only my mobile! I took the transcript as an application for leave to apply for judicial review rather than the ful hearing.

Ann

[Kalafrana]

Reading the transcript, it is clear that thre application which has already been heard was the application for permission to apply for judicial review. Judicial review is a two-stage process, the permission (or leave) stage being designed to screen out hopeless cases. The judge has made a sensible recommendation, but it is not binding on anybody.

Ann

[Janet Ashton]

Reading the transcript, it is clear that thre application which has already been heard was the application for permission to apply for judicial review. Judicial review is a two-stage process, the permission (or leave) stage being designed to screen out hopeless cases. The judge has made a sensible recommendation, but it is not binding on anybody.

Ann

Thanks - exactly - this is just what I took from it all. If his recommendations are ignored, it undoubtedly *will* turn into "an unseemly legal tussle".

[Kalafrana]

Indeed, and speaking as a constitutional law specialist, I think  the court will almost certainly conclude that the Secretary of State and the university have done nothing unlawful.

Ann

[Kimberly]

The latest on the tomb.....think its a bit "meh" but hey, at least its a "proper" table tomb.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-24159531

[mcdnab]

It is awful isn't it - and big for a monarch who only ruled for a few years.
Personally i favoured the black slab (it is more in keeping with recent royal burials).
This looks a bit theme park medieval for my tastes

[Kimberly]

Now, what I really think is utterly appalling and disrespectful is the little publicised fact that the University of Leicester wanted to put Richard's remains on public display.
This idea has "died a death" so to speak, thank goodness. I am well aware of the arguments for Cosmopolitanism ( a la Appiah et al), vs Cultural Relativism but I have always been uneasy re the display of the dead in museums etc. Put it this way, how would you feel if Tatiana's remains, for example, were on display to the general public to march past and gawp at?

[Превед]

Put it this way, how would you feel if Tatiana's remains, for example, were on display to the general public to march past and gawp at?

Isn't that what often happens to the relics of saints? (And the IF were demi-saints, as passion bearers.) Consider the remains of Saint Alexander Nevsky, which were transferred back to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery from the State Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism in 1989. Today you find them in a reliquary displayed to the faithful. Very much like the IF's remains in the SS. Peter & Paul Cathedral.

[Kalafrana]

I think ideas have changed since the Middle Ages. Then it was normal for the remains of fairly recently dead individuals to be put on display. Nowadays it is usual for remains to be buried, and that goes for older bodies discovered recently, unless there are very strong scientific reasons for display.

Photographs of Richard's skeleton will be enough.

Ann

[Janet Ashton]

And here is the latest on the legal battle, with Justice Haddon-Cave ruling *against* the Minister (Chris Grayling)'s attempt to argue on behalf of the MoJ that public consultation has already taken place and the Plantagenet Alliance should not have its costs protected.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/18/richard-iii-descendants-legal-costs-judicial-review-protected

A very interesting case indeed, with some fascinating political implications.

[Janet Ashton]

Private Eye also ran a piece on this recently, in which someone argued that Leicester Cathedral is using the case to commit an act of architectural vandalism by completely renovating the Cathedral ostensibly for the burial.....Rarely has a dead monarch been so alive; it reminds me very much of what Wendy Slater said about Nicholas II: that his bones hung figuratively over the whole political life of post-1991 Russia! In Richard's case it's a bit less obvious, but there is something of that in it still.

[Kimberly]

http://nerdalicious.com.au/history/richard-iii-the-unburied-king/

An interesting read I think.