Tag: Prisoners’ Right to Vote
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Jacob Eisler: Voter ID and the Elections Bill 2021: Legislative Manipulation of Democratic Procedure and the Limits of Judicial Review
The Elections Bill 2021, as of the date of publication for the House of Commons Committee stage, advances a variety of changes to the regulation of elections and the practice of voting in the UK. Of the reforms, one controversially reshapes the practical experience of voting for most citizens. A new voter ID requirement will…
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Andrew Geddis: Restoring the Voting Rights of (Some) New Zealand Prisoners
The issue of whether prisoners should have the right to vote (and, if so, which prisoners) has long troubled a number of democracies. The current position in the United Kingdom is that no prisoner serving a custodial sentence after conviction can vote, albeit that the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies currently are taking steps to allow…
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Elizabeth Adams: Prisoners’ Voting Rights: Case Closed?
On 6 December 2018, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe closed the supervision of the prisoners’ voting rights cases against the United Kingdom (UK) and adopted final resolution CM/ResDH(2018)467. Thirteen years after Hirst v United Kingdom (No.2) (2006) 42 EHRR 41 (Hirst) was made final, the protracted prisoner voting stalemate is over.…
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Andrew Geddis: New Zealand’s Supreme Court Considers Prisoner Voting – Twice
New Zealand’s Supreme Court has twice in the past two months turned its attention to the vexed issue of prisoner voting. Its first decision, Attorney-General v Taylor, upheld by a 3-2 majority a declaration that the legislative ban on all sentenced prisoners voting is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA).…
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Conor Gearty: The Human Rights Act Should Not Be Repealed
There is no reason to repeal the Human Rights Act and the government’s manifesto commitment to do so should be dropped. The objections to it are misconceived, the arguments against it being based either on inaccurate understandings of what it says or error-strewn assertions about the nature of its impact. The political motive for attacking…
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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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Mikolaj Barczentewicz: Limits of the Domestic Judicial Power to Disregard EU Law – Chester in Reverse
Domestic courts in the United Kingdom have a power (and a duty) to disregard EU law when it exceeds the scope of incorporation by the European Communities Act 1972. It is for UK courts to determine whether any particular measure is within the scope of incorporation or not. The contrary view on this matter, taken…
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Craig Prescott: Conference Report: Prisoner Voting and the Constitution 18th June 2014, Faculty of Laws, UCL
As is well known to readers of this blog, the issue of prisoner voting has been a long running and high profile saga. The Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling has argued that it is a ‘totemic issue’ that shows how the ECtHR has ‘lost democratic acceptability’ (Guardian, 20 Nov 2013). However, this issue can only be…
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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…
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Alison L. Young: Prisoner Voting: Human or Constitutional Right?
As is well known, in Hirst v UK (No 2) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights concluded that Section 3(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which removed the franchise from prisoners, was a disproportionate restriction of the right to vote found in article 3 of the First Protocol to…