Mr Justice Eady is to be replaced as senior libel and privacy judge in the High Court from 30 September 2010; his successor is Mr Justice Tugendhat, who in the past has shown himself to have – at least in many commentators’ view – a more “nuanced view” of the ECHR and its application in English law.

Among the links in James Robinson’s piece in Media Guardian is the PressGazette report on the Appeal Court ruling in McKennitt v. Ash, from darkest December 2006. It was a day that will live in infamy.

Mr Justice Eady gave a speech at City University in London last Wednesday – the text of the speech is here – in which he, rather surprisingly, acknowledges that the introduction of the ECHR into English law has “undoubtedly [had] an inhibiting effect on the exercise of our freedom of expression”.

Press commentator Steven Glover in the Independent today (scroll down) compares Eady’s comments to Richard Dawkins suddenly contemplating the existence of God.

In relation to McKennitt v. Ash, Eady says (on p. 9) that the obligation on the English courts to apply “Strasbourg jurisprudence” in privacy cases like that, i.e. where no previous domestic rules existed, represented “a fresh breeze blowing from the continent”. I have to say, it didn’t feel particularly fresh at the time.

The controversies surrounding libel law in England are hugely important and wide-ranging and, although the issues are different from the “developing law on privacy”, the two areas overlap in significant respects, not least to do with CFA’s, or no-win-no-fee arrangements. Roy Greenslade writes a very useful column on the subject in the Evening Standard today, well worth reading, not least because it relates Mr Justice Eady’s (rather modest, as it turns out) fears regarding freedom of expression…