Tag: European Court of Human RIghts
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Brice Dickson: The HRA and Legacy Issues in Northern Ireland
*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. Generally speaking, the Human Rights Act (HRA) has played a marvellous role in helping the Northern Ireland peace process to…
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Merris Amos: The place of human rights in the Constitution of the United Kingdom
Recently I have had the great pleasure of convening the SLS Annual Seminar – The Human Rights Act After 22 Years. Rather than formal papers, and yet another edited collection, it was agreed that following the event we would try to capture the contributions in a series of blog posts for the UKCLA Blog. Having…
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Stuart Wallace: Human Rights Claims and Overseas Military Operations: Will Clause 14 of the Bill of Rights Bill Really Limit Victims’ Access to British Courts?
Clause 14 of the Bill of Rights Bill, currently progressing through the UK parliament, introduces a total ban on individuals bringing a human rights claim, or relying on a Convention right, in relation to overseas military operations. As I have argued elsewhere, this is a retrograde development in the law. Thankfully, the clause may never…
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Karolina Szopa and Jamie Fletcher: The Future of Abortion Rights under the European Convention on Human Rights in Light of Dobbs
Introduction On Friday 24th June 2022, in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) overruled the right to an abortion nearly 50 years since it first declared it a constitutionally protected right. An outpour of protests and condemnation followed the release of the opinion, with many legal professionals, politicians and NGOs across Europe speaking out…
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Richard Clayton QC: The Government’s New Proposals for the Human Rights Act Part 3: An Assessment
This post completes my analysis of the Government’s Proposals for reform of the Human Rights Act 1998, following Part 1 (outlining the proposals) and Part 2 (analysing the interaction with the common law, the UK Supreme Court, and the intention to sharpen the focus on fundamental rights). This post considers three final themes of the…
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Richard Clayton QC: The Government’s New Proposals for the Human Rights Act Part 2: An Assessment
The Government explains its Proposals in its Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill Of Rights: A consultation to reform the Human Rights Act 1998 (CP 588), which represent a radical departure from the HRA. The specific Proposals are developed in the context of broader themes: respecting our common law traditions and strengthening the role…
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Roger Masterman: Reasserting/Reappraising Dualism
Dualism is considered a staple characteristic of the UK’s constitutional order. Recognised as a necessary derivative of the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, the notion of dualism is ‘based on the proposition that international law and domestic law operate in independent spheres’ and that interaction between those spheres is formally contingent – in the forum of…
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Andrew Geddis and Sarah Jocelyn: Is the NZ Supreme Court Aligning the NZBORA with the HRA?
The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA) and the United Kingdom’s Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) share common constitutional DNA. Both are “parliamentary bills of rights” that eschew a judicial power to invalidate rights-infringing legislation. However, the two rights instruments historically have diverged in a couple of important ways regarding the form of…
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Brian Christopher Jones: Panel Numbers: From ‘Court Packing’ to ‘Institution Building’
In 1937 American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), frustrated by his New Deal legislation being struck down by the Supreme Court, introduced the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill, or ‘court-packing plan’, which would have allowed him to increase the size of the Supreme Court under certain conditions. This was largely perceived as a move to rebalance…
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Lewis Graham: Hallam v Secretary of State: Under What Circumstances Can the Supreme Court Depart from Strasbourg Authority?
The Supreme Court recently handed down its decision in R (Hallam) v Secretary of State for Justice [2019] UKSC 2. It is an important and complex judgment, featuring seven separate judicial opinions and running to over 200 paragraphs. The central question was whether certain provisions of UK law concerning compensation for miscarriages of justice were…