Tag: Brighton Declaration
-
Veronika Fikfak: ECHR Reform: A Danger of Contagion in Relation to Article 3
On Wednesday 10 December, which is also Human Rights Day, Ministers of Justice of the Council of Europe will meet in Strasbourg to discuss how the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) should be reformed. A group of states will lead the drafting efforts, with a new interpretative declaration expected to be ready by May…
-
Helen Fenwick: Prisoners’ Voting Rights, Subsidiarity, and Protocols 15 and 16: Re-creating Dialogue With the Strasbourg Court?
This blog does not intend to rehearse the merits of the prisoners’ voting rights saga. In principle it is hard to muster reasons providing a basis for banning prisoners from voting: other rights related to the democratic process, such as association and free expression, may necessarily be somewhat circumscribed by the fact of imprisonment (although…
-
Noreen O’Meara: Reforming the European Court of Human Rights through Dialogue? Progress on Protocols 15 and 16 ECHR
Much progress has been made following the agreement of the Brighton Declaration on reforms to the working practices of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The Brighton Ministerial Conference in April 2012 prompted renewed reflections on the role and legitimacy of the ECtHR itself. In the UK, the timing of the Conference coincided with…
-
Colm O’Cinneide: Prisoners Votes (Again) and the ‘Constitutional Illegitimacy’ of the ECHR
The relationship between the UK and the European Court of Human Rights is once again in the news. On the 22th May last, the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court delivered its judgment in Scoppola v. Italy (No. 3), Application No. 126/05. This decision marks a potentially decisive moment in the long-running saga of prisoner…
-
Mark Elliott: The Brighton Declaration: where now for the Human Rights Act and the Bill of Rights debate?
The Brighton Declaration, which emerged from last week’s High Level Conference on the Future of the European Court of Human Rights, has already attracted a substantial amount of comment—including by Noreen O’Meara on this Blog and Ed Bates on the UK Human Rights Blog. In this post, I revisit some of the arguments I made…
-
Noreen O’Meara: Brighton rocked! Next steps for reforming the European Court of Human Rights
A blaze of controversy erupted over the disputed timing of Abu Qatada’s referral request to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights this week. Whilst raising a juicy legal question for proceduralists (examined incisively here and here) the inevitable media hysteria coincided with efforts to reform aspects of the Strasbourg court and…
-
Helen Fenwick: An appeasement approach in the European Court of Human Rights?
This piece asks whether, in the light of UK proposals for the reform of the ECtHR, and in the wake of the outcry in the UK over the Qatada decision (Othman v UK), the Court is taking an approach that looks like one of appeasement of certain signatory states. Two very recent decisions will be…
-
Mark Elliott: The draft Brighton Declaration, the Human Rights Act, and the Bill of Rights debate
As Noreen O’Meara has already posted, a draft of the Brighton Declaration concerning reform of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has leaked into the public domain. Of course, that draft may well turn out to be substantially different from the final text, which will reflect whatever consensus (if any) is reached at the…
-
Noreen O’Meara: Reforming the European Court of Human Rights: The Draft Brighton Declaration
Efforts to reform the European Court of Human Rights are defining the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe, a six-month term which comes “once in a generation”. With the docket and adjudicatory problems affecting the Strasbourg court well-known, the UK is seeking to build on previous recent efforts to streamline practices at the Court,…