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Dr Patrick O’Brien

@patrickcobrien.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.6K following 445 posts

Senior Lecturer in Public Law at Oxford Brookes. Research: judges, judging, public law and constitutional theory.

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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"You have to show us your passport so that we can prove that you didn't need to show us your passport" is almost perfect as an example of a particular kind of bureaucratic immigration logic.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... Hacking is a crime in most countries if a human does it. This will stop pretty quickly if AI execs know that they risk jail if they facilitate hacking in this way.
theguardian.com
Australia launches investigation after OpenAI agent hacked healthcare database
Prime minister says he told Sam Altman he was disappointed it had taken OpenAI ‘way too long’ to disclose breach
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Wasn’t getting rid of family liability for crimes regarded as an important reform about, I don’t know, a millennium ago?
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Hence the helmet and weapon
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Telegraph has its fingers on the pulses.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We're nearly full circle to a Bill Clintonesque "the plane sucked, but didn't inhale" line here.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Sony apparently attempting a variant Groucho Marx defence here: I refuse to sell to any customer that would be dumb enough to buy from me
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
The best thing you can say about this is that it’s going to be impossible to implement with the education system and economy the UK currently has. There are of course lots of less kind things that could be said about it. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Burnham to tell schools in England to adapt teaching to local business needs
PM wants curriculums for students aged 14 and above to be more responsive to local jobs market
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
protecting judicial independence isn’t hard people! You just have to screen them for ideology and threaten them www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
thetimes.com
Robert Jenrick names judges he would sack for ‘pro-migrant bias’
The shadow justice secretary has accused ‘activists’ within the judiciary of having links to political causes that compromise their independence
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
www.thetimes.com/uk/law/artic... Remember this easy judicial independence rule: if we like the decision judge = good; if we don’t, judge = bad
thetimes.com
Judge with links to asylum charity let drug dealer stay in UK
Judge Fiona Beach, a director of Asylum Aid from 2004-07, said Christian Quadjovie was not a threat to public safety in a tribunal hearing last year
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
I can’t remember, what was the rule again? www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
thetimes.com
Activist judges are getting too big for their wigs
A catalogue of immigration cases has caused outcry — but don’t expect Labour to wade in
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
The first rule of judicial independence? Oh yes, it’s which litigant do we like? www.thetimes.com/comment/the-...
thetimes.com
The lady chief justice is wrong, politicians can criticise court rulings
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch were not undermining the judiciary when they raised concerns about an immigration tribunal ruling
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Always remember the first rule of judicial independence: which litigant do we like? www.thetimes.com/comment/the-...
thetimes.com
Prince Harry should lose his title as a counsellor of state
The Duke of Sussex’s attack on the judiciary is part of a regrettable pattern
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
In years to come, AI and search is going to offer a fascinating case study of just how and why Google et al built a product that worked really well and made them a shedload of money, and then proceeded to demolish the functionality of that original product because they got bored or something.
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Ben Yong @bymyong.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
What is fascinating about the debate over whether the Chancellor can refuse Farage’s resignation is the marginalisation of Parliament on a decision affecting one of its own members. 1/4
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Yes, similar experiences here. Once on a very narrow canal towpath with my mildly disabled son.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
"Electric bikes are just unregulated motorbikes" is one of my (hopefully) few grumpy old man opinions. Either speed limit them or require riders to pay tax and insurance. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
theguardian.com
‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation
The collision was catastrophic. Jane Ouartsi suffered a fractured collarbone, two spinal fractures, a broken femur that took three operations to fix, and she had to learn to walk again like a baby. Wh...
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Jana Zikmundova @jzk55.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
#OTD #RedDevils #Belgium🇧🇪
Dessin dans le style du peintre belge René Magritte
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
New impassioned rule of law defence emerges from, um, UEFA and Sepp Blatter. www.rte.ie/sport/soccer...
rte.ie
FIFA's Balogun decision 'crossed a red line' says UEFA
UEFA says FIFA's decision to suspend a red card shown to United States striker Folarin Balogun "crossed a red line".
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Yep, that'll do it alright. There's no guarantee whatsoever that inputting the same query into AI twice will give the same result, so this is just junk citation.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
OSCOLA, 5th edn, ibid
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
OSCOLA wants us to reject the Latin cites. Join me, fellow schismatics, in rejecting this rejection of the authority of Rome.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Genuinely (ibid)
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Really mean it (supra n 1)
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
ibid
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Have been radicalised by OSCOLA 5 and now contemplating a future as an ibid truther.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
But (to shamelessly steal from Terry Pratchett) ibid knows everything!
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
You could annoy the entire internet at once by renaming air conditioning “a/cky bits”
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Reposted by Dr Patrick O’Brien
Alex Selby-Boothroyd @alexselbyb.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The World Cup is a time for learning
Search interest in "Doctor Congo" is waning
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I feel like we'd all benefit if we had to call Barbara before looking something up on the internet
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Recently diverted some old All ER reports from the bin. This Lexis thing sounds interesting, hope it works out for them.
Old printed advert: “Lexis connect time reduced to £10 per hour”
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Call me crazy, but what if we run universities out of former mines? Will they care then?
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
“By ignoring the chickens who had NO CHOICE but to cross the road, your so-called joke contributes to the exclusion of poultry narratives from our shared consciousness“, I explain to my young son, in one of our classic social interactions.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
They’ve spent *years* training to explain to strangers that their offhand jokes are factually inaccurate. They are the kids of the future!
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I don't know what this means to anyone, but my kids have come home from school delighted about the social media ban, and are only disappointed that it doesn't include WhatsApp.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Fake IDs are a good analogy. We accept that it’s going to happen. We don’t use that inevitability as an argument for removing age restrictions on sale of alcohol; or for insisting that the only possible policy response is that breweries produce low alcohol drinks aimed at kids.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Is a ban the right thing? Is it enforceable? Will the Govt screw it up? Very good questions, but not my point. Is it wrong in principle? Certainly not for younger children. Query closer to 16. What if social media was different? Then social media would be different.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Allowing parents to say to their kids "you can't be on social media, because it's banned" is a powerful response to "but all my friends from school are on it". It's not nothing, even if weak. Giving schools a basis to recommend that students shouldn't be on it is not nothing.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
What if the enforceability of a ban on social media is not actually the point? Kids and tech is a massive social coordination problem that has been left unresolved. A ban is a social signal and if nothing else gives parents, schools and kids themselves a starting point.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Bluesky probably not the audience for this, but if you are still on X and wavering, just have a think about who will have sole control of your legacy account, content, and personal data if and when access to the website is finally blocked from the UK/Europe.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Thanks Paolo!
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
In short: given the nature of contemporary politics and the elite political dynamics Brexit and social media have cursed the UK with, it needs to be *much* more difficult for UK politicians to change fundamental policy. Which suggests something much more like a written constitutional model.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
But that argument is dead in the water if politicians prove to be incapable of setting top-level political goals, if there's no strategic vision, if the nature of day-to-day politics is pure strategic instability.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
The traditional argument for the unwritten political constitution is that politics should have primacy, that the setting of top level political goals is a matter for politicians, who should be able to change things. In abstract, it's a legitimate, even admirable, ideal.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Why does this matter? It matters in its own right, of course, but for the UK as a political economy it's disastrous. Who is going to make an economic deal, at great investment of diplomatic time and resources, with a country that is likely to change its mind next year, next week, tomorrow?
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Within the UK post-Brexit, nothing can get better because everything gets abandoned when someone starts shouting. Outside, things are even worse: stuck on a geopolitical rollercoaster partly of its own making, the UK is in danger of becoming a faithless actor, along the lines of the current US.
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
But actually the problem is much more serious. It's not just about the constitution any more. Changes to the political economy of information globally, and changes to politics internally, have cursed the UK with a governing political elite that can't stick with a difficult policy for a wet weekend
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
The UK needs a formal written constitution. Ok, ok, but hear me out: the last decade has shown with absolute clarity and consistency that the unwritten constitution is dead. No more good chaps, no more quiet dignity, and fewer civil servants quietly smoothing things out in the background.
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Colin Murray @colinmurray.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
We can't look away from the images of families fleeing burning houses without calling this out as a pogrom, whipped up by influential actors who care nothing for the people of Belfast: www.irishnews.com/news/norther...
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Dr Patrick O’Brien @patrickcobrien.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
(No doubt there’s an element of radicalisation too, given the media discourses in which they have to swim)
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