Category: Human Rights Act 1998
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Michael Foran: For Women Scotland: Is legal recognition of biological sex a violation of human rights?
In For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers the UK Supreme Court rejected the contention that possession of a Gender Recognition Certificate changes an individual’s sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, maintaining equality of status for all those protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment and ensuring that biological women are protected…
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Crash Wigley: For Women Scotland: A Case of Significant Silences
For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 is a judgment that has triggered great public discussion about the position of trans people in Great Britain (for an interesting discussion of the legal position in Northern Ireland, see Deb et al, “Limits to the UK Supreme Court’s Reach: Northern Ireland, the Windsor Framework and…
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![Elizabeth Adams: The Judicial Approach to the Judicial Discretion under s.4 HRA in Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Mercer [2024] UKSC 12](https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/elizabeth-adams-e1548439339676.png)
Elizabeth Adams: The Judicial Approach to the Judicial Discretion under s.4 HRA in Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Mercer [2024] UKSC 12
In Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Mercer [2024] UKSC 12 (Mercer), the Supreme Court was confronted with whether and how to exercise its powers under sections 3 and 4 of the HRA 1998. This blog post will focus on assessing how the Supreme Court approached the judicial discretion to grant a declaration…
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Sanjit Nagi: The Stranglehold of New Labour and Lord Irvine’s Rights-based Constitution
Last year’s Supreme Court decision in R (AAA) v Home Secretary – which found the British government’s Rwanda policy to be unlawful – has reignited broader debates about the position of a government which commands a majority in Parliament vis a vis the judiciary, the separation of powers, the extent to which legislating against judicial…
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Mark Hill KC and Simon Lee: State, Churches and Chancel Repairs – Twenty Years On
Twenty years ago today, on 26 June 2003, each of the five Law Lords in Aston Cantlow v Wallbank [2004] 1 AC 546 gave separate, detailed opinions on a matter at the cusp of public law and private law. Was the Parochial Church Council (PCC) of a beautiful parish church in Warwickshire responsible for the…
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Jeevan Hariharan: The Changing Face of Horizontal Effect
On 10 March, Lord Sales delivered the Cambridge Freshfields Annual Law Lecture on the topic of ‘constitutional values in the common law of obligations’. The lecture, which has not been discussed so far on this blog, seeks to explain how constitutional values familiar from the world of public law (such as freedom of expression, liberty…
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Alice Donald: Earning Deference from Strasbourg: Has the UK Got the Message?
This blog addresses a paradox: why is it that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or ‘the Court’) continues to be the target of vituperative rhetoric from UK ministers and others, when the number of judgments against the UK has steadily fallen and the UK (as a successful respondent state) has been a beneficiary…
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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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Jane Rooney: The Extraterritorial Application of the Human Rights Act: Overseas Military Operations and Beyond
*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.* With the reinstatement of Dominic Raab as Secretary of State for Justice, the Bill of Rights Bill, currently before Parliament, is once again a possibility only…