HMCTS says removal necessary to protect listed building

A new mural by Banksy that appeared yesterday on the Royal Courts of Justice in London will be taken down, court authorities have confirmed.

The artwork, which shows a judge striking a protester with a gavel, was quickly covered with black plastic and surrounded by barriers. HM Courts & Tribunals Service says the removal is necessary to protect the Grade II-listed building.

They said: “The Royal Courts of Justice is a listed building and HMCTS are obliged to maintain its original character.

The piece is widely considered to be referencing recent protests linked to the banning of activist group Palestine Action, but for now, its time on the court’s walls is set to be short-lived.

Potential BANKSY ARTWORK.

Depicting a Judge attacking a protester with his Gavel.

Currently being covered by the Westminster Council.#StreetArt #Banksy #LondonArt #breaking #BreakingNews #artnews pic.twitter.com/od8bvStLfb

— Mighty Mushroom Man (@MightyMushroomM) September 8, 2025

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed David Lammy as Lord Chancellor in the mini-reshuffle

Barrister-turned-politician David Lammy has been appointed Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice in Keir Starmer’s latest mini-reshuffle.

The shake-up follows Angela Rayner’s resignation as Deputy Prime Minister on Friday, after it emerged she had underpaid around £40,000 in stamp duty on her £800,000 Hove flat — a failure to seek specialist tax advice which breached the ministerial code.

Lammy — who has also been named Deputy Prime Minister — replaces barrister Shabana Mahmood MP, who held the justice role for just over a year. Mahmood was only the second woman, and the first Muslim, to serve in the position.

The Tottenham MP, previously Foreign Secretary, becomes the tenth Lord Chancellor in a decade. A trained barrister, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1994 before completing an LLM at Harvard Law School.

Top of his agenda will likely be the rising prison population and the Crown Court backlog — long-standing challenges that have thwarted his predecessors.

Elsewhere in the reshuffle, Baroness Levitt (Alison Levitt KC) replaces Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede as Labour’s justice spokesperson in the Lords. Called to the bar in 1988, Levitt served as principal legal adviser to Keir Starmer during his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions.

Meanwhile, barrister Ellie Reeves MP has been appointed Solicitor General, succeeding former Slaughter and May lawyer Lucy Rigby, who moves to the Treasury as Economic Secretary.

A US lawyer — who shares the same name as the tech billionaire — takes legal action against Meta over the repeated removal of his Facebook pages

A US lawyer with the same name as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta, the parent company of the social media giant, because his pages keep getting suspended.

Unlike his Silicon Valley namesake, Indianapolis lawyer Mark S. Zuckerberg has spent the past three decades practising law, specialising in consumer bankruptcy and debt relief.

This name mix-up is no new phenomenon. Zuckerberg told reporters that his account has been suspended five times over the last eight years, having first opened a Facebook account in 2009. You can’t accuse him of lacking a sense of humour about the whole situation: in 2015 the attorney launched a tongue-in-cheek website called IamMarkZuckerberg.com. Zuckerberg told Wired in 2016 that “It was kind of funny. I had my real two minutes of fame.”

However, it seems that his patience has run out. According to the lawsuit filed at Marion County Superior Court, Zuckerberg claims that the repeated suspensions have cost him thousands of dollars in lost business.

“It’s not funny,” Mr Zuckerberg told website WTHR-TV. “Not when they take my money.”

The lawyer is accusing Meta of negligence and breach of contract after paying $11,000 for advertising on the site for his business, which he argues was improperly taken down.

“It’s like buying a billboard… and then they put a blanket over it,” he told the website.

Emails with Facebook he shared online reveal accusations of not using his ‘authentic name’ and warning that the account would be permanently disabled if the issue continued. Zuckerberg continuously provided them with various forms of ID to verify his identity, but it was not enough.

His account was shut down in May and only restored after the lawsuit was filed.

Meta has since released a statement, saying it has reinstated Mark [S] Zuckerberg’s account, after finding it had been disabled in error. We appreciate Mr Zuckerberg’s continued patience on this issue and are working to try and prevent this from happening in the future.”

He’s reportedly seeking reimbursement, legal fees, and an injunction — but has joked he’d settle for an apology, or even just a handshake, from the other Zuckerberg.