Tag: European Court of Human RIghts
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Emmanouil Bougiakiotis: E.S. v Austria: Blasphemy Laws and the Double Standards of the European Court of Human Rights
This case concerns the criminal conviction of an Austrian national because of a number of comments she made about Muhammad during some seminars she held under the title “Basic Information on Islam”. In one of those seminars she referred to Muhammad’s marriage with Aisha, one of his wives, implying that the fact that the marriage…
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Benedict Douglas: The Fundamental Tension Underlying the UK Constitution
Are we defined by the duties we owe or the choices we make? Until very recently UK citizens have predominantly understood their personal identity, what is right and wrong, and how they should be governed, in terms of the duties they owe. This view of the individual is found within the UK Constitution and forms…
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Anurag Deb: Re McLaughlin: Normalising the Departure from Strasbourg?
30 August 2018 marked the end of a long journey for Siobhan McLaughlin: on 28 January 2014 her partner of 23 years John Adams passed away and she took on sole responsibility for their four children. Since then, she has fought to be granted financial assistance from the State, which is reserved for individuals who…
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Liora Lazarus: Do Human Rights Impede Effective Counterterrorism?
Theresa May and Keir Starmer disagree about whether human rights impede effective counterterrorism. Both bring experience at the coalface of this field, May as former Home Secretary, and Starmer as former DPP responsible for the prosecution of terrorist cases. Who is right? There is no point in pretending that human rights do not present legal…
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Tobias Lock and Tom Gerald Daly: Brexit and the British Bill of Rights: Capturing Constitutional Complexity
Euroscepticism – usually framed as an argument from national sovereignty – was an important driving force behind Brexit, but also serves as a key motivator behind efforts to reform domestic human rights law. Calls to ‘scrap the Human Rights Act’ (HRA) and to replace it with a British Bill of Rights (BBR) are usually accompanied…
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David Scott: Miller, Sewel, and the Human Rights Act
Many celebrated Miller’s outcome, imposing a Parliamentary “brake” (however brief) on the triggering of Article 50. But the Supreme Court’s unanimous agreement on the devolution issues [129–151 for the majority; agreement in the dissents at 242, 243, and 282] may have weakened opposition to the Government’s “other” crusade—against the European Court of Human Rights. Devolution…
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Richard Clayton QC: New Directions for Article 10: Strasbourg Reverses the Supreme Court in Kennedy
The Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v Charity Commission was striking from many points of view. Mr Kennedy was a journalist frustrated by the way the Commission handled his allegations concerning George Galloway MP’s controversial Iraq charity, the Miriam Appeal. He applied for disclosure of documents under the Freedom of Information Act, arguing that a…
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Graeme Cowie: Prisoners to Devolved Fortune? The Right to Vote and the Scotland Act 2016
The Hirst (No 2) v United Kingdom judgment has proven to be one of the most contentious of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Its subject matter, prisoner voting, has also served both to illustrate and to some extent to define the relationship between that Court and our domestic legal and constitutional order.…
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Piet Eeckhout: The Real Record of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
Brexit debates have started focusing on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, after it has become clear that the economic effects of the UK departure from the EU are likely to be negative. Michael Gove has attacked the Charter, and the CJEU case law pertaining to it, in a key Leave speech, and the Financial…
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HRA Watch: Reform, Repeal, Replace? Sarah Lambrecht: Criticism of the European Court of Human Rights: A UK Phenomenon?
Editors’ note: The blog invited constitutional lawyers to comment on the UK Government’s proposal to repeal and replace the Human Rights Act. We end this series with a post by Sarah Lambrecht, law clerk at the Belgian Constitutional Court and a PhD Fellow at the University of Antwerp. You can read the other contributions in…