Sam McIntosh

Responsibilities:

Sam McIntosh has also worked as a Teaching Fellow at the Law School, teaching Criminal Law, Tort Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law, and Introduction to Property Law.

Research

Sam assists Dr McNamara with the Law, Terrorism and the Right to Know project. This project explores democratic traditions of media freedom, and the contemporary demands of national and international security. The issues we examine include how different parties involved in controlling access to, and the communication of information see the relationships between principles of open justice, the rule of law, public accountability and national security. For more information please visit the programme's website at www.reading.ac.uk/LTRK

Sam's main interests are: domestic and international human rights law; open justice, democratic accountability and investigations into deaths where there is alleged State involvement; the relationship between national security, state accountability, media law and access to information; and State responsibility in international law.

Further Publications

'Fulfilling Their Purpose: Inquests, Article 2 and Next of Kin', Sam McIntosh (2012) Public Law 3, 407-415
"Justice and Security Green Paper Response", Lawrence McNamara and Sam McIntosh, published as part of the research project 'Terrorism and the Right to Know'. (January 2012)
"Journalists' Shield Laws: What Lies Ahead?" Lawrence McNamara & Sam McIntosh, (2010) Gazette of Law & Journalism (4 Dec 2010)

Biographical Details:

Sam is a fully qualified solicitor and before coming to the School of Law trained and worked at three of the most highly regarded human rights firms in the country. Sam began his training in the criminal defence department at Imran Khan & Partners. He went on to finish his training and work in the civil departments at Bhatt Murphy Solicitors and Hickman & Rose. Sam worked primarily on cases involving civil actions against the police and prison authorities, representing families in inquests into deaths in custody or at the hands of the State, and judicial review.

Amongst some of the notable cases Sam worked on were: the House of Lords case Re R (Al-Skeini & Ors) v Secretary of State for Defence [2007] UKHL 26, which dealt with the scope of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights over incidents which occur outside of national territory; the House of Lords case of Jones and others v Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [2006] UKHL 26, concerning the jurisdiction of UK courts to hear civil claims against foreign States, or their representatives, for torture or other international crimes; The Court of Appeal case of R (Reynolds) v Independent Police Complaints Commission [2008] EWCA Civ 1160,which examined the compulsory nature of the Independent Police Complaints Commission's duty to carry out an independent investigation into all of the circumstances surrounding the cause of a serious injury to a man who was found in a coma in his police cell, on the morning following his arrest; the case of Azelle Rodney, a young man who was shot dead by police officers and whose inquest was suspended because of the sensitive nature of some of the evidence surrounding the circumstances of the shooting; the Opiate Dependent Prisoner Litigation, a group action brought by approximately 200 prisoners for inappropriate healthcare in prisons for those with drug dependency issues where the Home Office was forced to admit liability for negligence, assault and breaches of the Human Rights Act.

As well as working on Reading University's Law, Terrorism and the Right to Know Project, Sam is also doing a part-time PhD with City University's Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism. His research topic is open justice and deaths at the hands of the state.