Category: Bill of Rights 2022
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Roger Masterman: The Convention Rights in the Human Rights Act and under a Bill of Rights: Domestic, European or Both?
*Editors’ note: This post is part of a series on ‘The Human Rights Act After 22 Years’, following the SLS Annual Seminar held in November 2022. You can read the first post in the series here. The extent of the interpretative space which exists to accommodate ‘the domestic’ within the meaning of the Convention rights under the Human Rights Act…
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Hélène Tyrrell and Conall Mallory: Interpretive Space: The Human Rights Act 1998 v the British Bill of Rights Bill
*Editors’ note: This post is part of a series on ‘The Human Rights Act After 22 Years’, following the SLS Annual Seminar held in November 2022. You can read the first post in the series here. Repeal and replacement of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) has been on and off the political agenda for years. The latest initiative is the Bill…
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Edmund Robinson: Fumbling with interpretation – Clause 5 of the Bill of Rights and the positive obligations challenge
The ‘Bill of Rights Bill’, repealing and replacing the Human Rights Act, has already attracted significant criticism. This post focuses on clause 5, with which the government seeks to give effect to its previously expressed scepticism regarding ‘positive obligations’. These are duties on the authorities to take positive measures to protect individuals from human rights…
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Craig Purshouse: Abortion and the Bill of Rights: A reply to Kirsty Hughes
The US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization should have given pause to supporters of vague rights charters that expand the power of judges to decide contentious moral and political questions. This goes even more so for those who want to secure the ability of women to obtain safe and legal abortions. Rather…
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Kyle Murray: The future of rights-enhanced interpretations under the Bill of Rights
Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA”) is one of the central features of our current human rights law. It is an instruction that, ‘[s]o far as it is possible to do so, primary legislation and subordinate legislation must be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights’. The strength…
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Kirsty Hughes: The Bill of Rights and the Precarity of Abortion Rights
In the aftermath of the US Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization attention has turned to whether abortion is adequately protected in the UK from the winds of political change. Given that in England, Scotland, and Wales abortion is provided for by ordinary Act of Parliament, and in Northern Ireland by Regulation, an orthodox view…
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Stefan Theil: Henry VIII on steroids – executive overreach in the Bill of Rights Bill
Constitutional bombshells do not come along very often, most change is incremental and piecemeal – or at least that was the conventional wisdom that prevailed on the UK constitution for many decades. More recently, it appears that scarcely a month passes without suggestions, discussions, proposals, or enactments of far-reaching constitutional reforms – whether through government…
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Iain Jamieson: Effect of the Bill of Rights upon the meaning of Convention Rights under the Scotland Act
The relationship between the Scotland Act 1998 (“the SA”), Convention rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 (“the HRA”) is well known. Convention rights are embedded in the Scottish constitution. The Scottish Parliament cannot legislate, and Scottish Ministers cannot act, in any way which is incompatible with those rights (SA ss. 29(2)(d), 53,54,57(2)). The SA…
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Guy Baldwin: The Proposed Bill of Rights and Constitutionalism in the UK
On an orthodox approach, legislation of the UK Parliament is interpreted by courts, but not reviewed by them against legal standards. The Human Rights Act 1998 enables such review and empowers courts to declare Acts of Parliament in contravention of those standards. In so doing, it advances constitutionalism, in the sense of there being legal…